BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hcttrg W. Sage 189Z A 2 II k I 7 /4?y 7673-2 '^^/ Jf^9- RETURN TO ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY ITHACA, N. Y. Cornell University Library HD1167.T48 Musalmans and money-lenders In the Punja 3 1924 013 743 848 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013743848 MllSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS IN THE PUNJAB. BY S;'S. THORBURN, Bengal Civil Service : Author of " Bannu or Our Afghan Frontier," "David Leslie," &c., &c. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. MDCCCLXXXVI. I'RINTED AT THE PIONEER PRESB, ALLAHABAD. INDEX TO CONTENTS: Page. Accounts— improvements in ... 149 Advances to agriculturists lOI Agriculturists — condition of Musalman . 73-92 „ — in Bombay 58-64 Arains — particulars about 32 Attachment and sale — rules of, in Kapurthala ... ... 198-199 Arbitration 77 „ — changes proposed in 142 Awans — particulars about 29 Area and population statement 13 Bannu district ... 86, 163 Biluches— particulars of 22,23 Brahmans — ,, ,, 34 Bunniahs — „ ,, 3S-39 ' ' Calcutta Review " on Indian legislation . 184-190 Chief Court on eiSfect of infant marriage . 120-121 ,, ,, ,, misconception of powers . 122 ,, „ ,, presumption of ignorance. 126-129 Census of 1881 — figures of ... 13 Central Punjab 2 ,, „ — people of the 14 Civil Procedure Code— effect of " may " and " shall " in ,., 141 „ „ ,, — changes wanted in ... 139-153 Class legislation 57 Conversion of Hindus to Islam 3.8 Cyclical system no Debt —imprisonment for ... 145, 146 Decrees and executions ... 142, 143 Dehra-Ghazi-Khan ... 86, 163 Dehra- Ismail-Khan 86, 164 Deccan— agrarian rising in the 69 Deccan Ryuts' Act 70-71 Direct management 109-110 Diwan Sawan Mall II, 12 ( ii ) Page. Eastern Punjab— inhabitants of the ... .:. ... 13 Education of Musalmans ... ... ... ... 96 Elasticity of demand — four modes of ... ... ... 109 Expropriation of peasantry ... ... ... ... i „ — Sir W. Muir on ... ... ... 65 „ —Mr. J. E. Lyall on ... ... ... 87 „ — .Sir J. Strachey on ... ... ... 66 „ —Sir D. McLeod on ... ... ... 68 False bonds — making of ... ... ... 135-136 Famine Commission on indebtedness ... ... ... 80 ,, ,, ,, fixity and elasticity ... ... 180-183 „ ,, „ land transfers ... ... ... 93 Fixed cash assessments — introduction of ... ... ... 46 P'luctuating „ — kinds of ... ... ... 109-112 ,, ,, —area under ... ... ... 113 ,, „ —extension of ... ... ... 114 Fraud— High Court, N.-W. P., on ... ... ... 194 Ghakkhars ... ... ... ... ... 31 Gujars ... ... ... ... ... 30 Gujrat district ... ... ... ... ... iy6 Gujranwala ,, ... ... ... ... ... 177 Hazara „ ... ... ... ... ... 89, 92 Hindus and Sikhs... ... ... ... ... 34-41 Hindu traders ... ... ... ... ... 35 Hinduism — effects of, on character ... ... ... jc Holy classes ... ... ... ... ... y 29 Ignorance^presumption of ... ... ... ... 126-129 India-people of ... ... ... ... 3^^ ^^^ g^ Interest — award of ... ... ... . , g Insolvency Law ... ... ... ___ j^g^ ^^^ Imprisonment for debt ... .. ,... . ^ , , „ , , ■■■ ■■• 145-146 Islam — effect of, on character Indebtedness— agricultural,, throughout India Jat tribes Jhang district Jhelum ,, Kapurthala rules ... Khatris ,,, ' Kohat district 8, 16, 17 54-72 24> 25 82, 158 91, 173 198-199 35 9, 92, 172 ( iii ) Page. Land question — material facts in ... ... ... 95-9^ ,, „ — immaterial issues in ... -. ... 97 ,, tenure — reforms in ... ... ... . 179 ,, — restrictions in transfers of ... ... ... 99, 102 „ transfers — statistics of ... ... ... ... 93 Laisser aller — remarks on ... ... ... ... 31.87 Legislation in India— Mr. Howell on ... ... ... 184-190 „ ,, — Chief Court on ... ... 119,120 Litigation — costliness of ... ... ... ... 130, 131 ,, — increase in ... ... ... ... 76 Limitation Act— changes in ... ... ... ... 74,75 „ — extension of period of ... .. ... 147 Mahomedan revival ... .. ... ... 14, 15 Mahmood, Justice — on interest in bonds ... ... ... 191-193 Marwari money-lenders of the Deccan ... ... ... 58-64 Montgomery district ... ... ... ... 82, 155 Moghals and Turks ... ... .. ... 8,32 Modern British India ... ... ... ... j^, cc Mooltan district ... ... ... ... 86,160 Musalman agriculturists — state of ... ... 82-92, 155-177 ,, „ — improvidence of ... ... 51 ,, tribes — a list of ... ... ... ... jg Munsifs ... ... ... ... ...78,129,135 Muzaffargarh district ... ... ... ... 84, 157 Northern Table-land described ... ... ... 5 Necessaries — exemption from sale and attachment for all ... 144 Optimism of Government ... ... ... ... 77 Our system— remarks on ... ... ... 39, 56, 57, 87, 137 Over-legislation— Sir G. Campbell on ... ... ... 117-118 ,, ,, — Mr. Howell on ... .. ... 184 190 ,, ,, — examples of ... ... ... 119 Pathans — particulars about ... ... ... ... 20-22 Patriarchal system ... ... -. ... 116 Peshawar district ... ... ... ... 89,169 pleaders— uses and evils of ... ... ... 23, 79, 132, 152, 153 Proprietary rights in land — gift of ... ... ... 49-51,84 Punjab — state of the, before annexation ... ... ... 8-io^'42 ,, — state of the, after annexation ... ... ... "45; 46 ,, — races of the ... ... ... ... 13-41 ,, — divisions of the Western ... ... ... 2-3 ,, — colonisation of the ... ... ... ... 7 ( iv ) Rajputs— particulars about Rainfall— rule of „ — tracts of short Rawalpindi district Reforms in land tenure J, „ — native views on J, „ — direction of Relief Acts— agreement in Registration of bonds Revenue system of Sikhs ,, „ introduced by „ balances ... Settlements — summary „ — regular Specific reforms stated Sikhs particulars about Sind landlords South-western plain described. Suits— increase in number of . Syads ... Tenants and peasant proprietors Urban population Ultimate landlord — the State is Western Punjab — tribes of the Working days in the year Page. 25, 27 89 108 172 102-105 139-140 141 72 150-152 43-45 46-53 IIS 47 48 144-153 15. 16, 34 65, 72 4 75. 76 27-28 SS-S6 17 45 18 135 HUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. CHAPTER I. A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE PUNJAB. The Punjab is an agricultural province, a land of peasant proprietors, a large and annually Gradual expropri- • . i- r i ■ i • ation of Musaiman increasing portion of whom are sinking peasant proprietors jn^o the position of serfs to the monev- a source of danger. *• ______ _ _ J lenders. The graduart'rarisfer of owner- ship of the soil from its natural lords — the cultivators — to astute but uniniiuential Hindu traders and bankers, is -directly d ue to a system of law and administration created . by ourselves, which, unless remedied in time, must event- ually imperil the stab ility of oiir h old on the country. The danger will be greater in the Western than in the Central and Eastern tracts of the Punjab, because, in the west, the rural population is entirely composed of strong Musaiman tribes ; hence the antagonism of creeds will be superadded to that of interests. Throughout Eagjern Europe the Jews are hated and persecuted rather because they are successful aliens and professors of an old-world faith than because they are successful. So with the Bun- niahs of the Western Punjab. They offend not only be- cause they thrive on the misfortunes of monotheistic agri- culturists, but because they are interlopers and polytheists, if not idolators. 2 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. The rich level plain between the meridians of Jhelum and Ludhiana roughly comprises the The Central Plain. . ,,...,„., nme central districts of the Punjab, namely, Gujranw'ala, Sialkdt, Gurdaspur, Aipritsar, Lahore, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Firo^pur, and Ludhiana. These nine districts have an area of 19,218 square miles, or nearly half that of Scotland. The population is made up of thirty-seven lakhs of Musalmans, nine lakhs of Sikhs, and twenty-six lakhs of Hindus. The tract is fertile, thickly populated, and carefully cultivated. It is, except towards the south, fairly protected from famine by canals or a sufficient rainfall. Though the Musalmans consider- ably outnumber Sikhs and Hindus together, either of the latter are strong enough to hold their own, single-handed, against the former. There is little active antipathy be- tween the followers of the three religions. Of the three, the Musalmans are the most backward and ignorant, and therefore least able to hold their own in a law-ridden age. The Eastern Punjab is as large as Scotland, but sup- The Eastern Pun- ports double its population. It is divid- i^^- ed into eight districts,* covers an area of 25,622 square miles, of which one-third is mountainous, and has a population of thirty-eight lakhs of Hindus, eleven lakhs of Musalmans, and one lakh of Sikhs. Thus, Hindus outnumber Musalmans by over three to one. The latter having embraced Islam between 200 to 300 years ago, retain many of their ancient Hindu customs and supersti- tions, are very lax Mahomedans, and would, in case of a popular rising, rather follow than lead their Hindu or Sikh neighbours. ^ • They are Kangra, Simla, Karnal, Umballa, Delhi, Rohtak, Gurgaon, Hissar-fa;«- Sirsa. ■'' A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE PUNJAB. In Aurangzeb's time his proselytising zeal burnt so Conversions to Is- fiercely that great numbers of Hindus ™" verted to Islam, particularly in the eastern districts of the Punjab. Their change of faith was never sincere. To this day Hinduism has so strong a hold ^pon them that, as it has been well put, they " observe t he feasts of both religions and the fasts of neithe r." Since the Mutiny of 1857 they are said to have become much stricter believers. It may generally be said that, through- out the Punjab, the religion of the majority mitigates the exclusiveness of the minority. Thus, talcing Lahore as a centre, Musalmans are progressively eastwards of it laxer, but westwards stricter, Mahomedans. We must, however, not forget that one peculiarity of Islam is, that the more ignorant the believer the greater and more easily roused is the potential energy of his fanaticism. The Arabs of the Soudan and of Arabia are many of them sun-worshippers still at heart, and know no more of Islam than its creed — " Except God there is no God and Mahomed is the Messenger of God : " yet both, when inflamed by a Mahdi, are reckless fanatics. There remains to be described the Western Punjab, the home of the Musalman subjects of Western or Musal- ^ t- r^ • u man portion of the our Queen-Empress. It comprises all province. British Punjab between the meridian of Jhelum on the east and our actual Trans-Indus frontier on the west, between the Himalayas on the north and the feudatory State of Bahawalpur on the south. The whole country covers an area of 61,792 square miles, or nearly two-thirds of the Punjab. It is therefore larger than England and Wales together, and twice as large as Ireland or Scotland. It is divided into two unequal tracts, with distinctive physical and climatic characteristics, by a range of mountains called the Salt Range, which extends for MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. about 200 miles from near Jhelum in a western direction to Kalabagh on the Indus, at which point the hills blend with those of the Kohat district. South of the Salt Range the country, except in its The South-West- extreme north-eastern corner, where lies em plain. the fertile little submontane district of Gujrat, is one vast arid plain traversed by five great rivers— the Sutlej, Ravi, Chenab, Jhelum, and Indus. The last-named runs from north to south, the other four in a south-western direction, until, after converging one into the other, they finally join the former in one united stream opposite Rajanpur, in the Dera-Ghazi-Khan district. As each river flows through a plain whose soil is light and sandy, and is subject to great and sudden rises between the months of June and September, according to the rainfall in its catchment basin in the Himalayas, each has worn out for itself in the course of ages an expan- sive depression or valley of from five to twenty miles in width. Within this bed its streams oscillate between bank and bank with, it is said, unaccountable periodi- city. In the cold weather the stream meanders with feeble current in its narrow channel, but in the hot, sweeps along in full volume a turbid sea of yellow water. When the flooded streams subside, a vast expanse of arable or grazing land becomes available, and has for ages been always utilized for tilth and pasturage by its amphibious human denizens. The area composing the south-eastern plain just described is about 44,640 square miles, or two-thirds of the Western Punjab. It is divided into nine districts — Bannu, Dera-Ismail-Khan, and Dera-Ghazi-Khan (Trans-Indus), and Gujrat, Shahpur, Jhang, Montgomery, Mooltan, and Muz- affargarh (Cis-Indus). Excluding the long strip of upland ' ^' A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE PUNJAB. and river bed between the Indus south of Bannu (Ed- wardesabad) and the Suliman Range, which forms the western boundary of British India, this great south- western plain is broken up, by the river system flowing through it, into four "doabs" or tongues of land between rivers. In good seasons each " doab" is throughout the autumn, and early months in the cold weather, covered with a flush of grass and scrub jungle, and thus affords ample pasturage to the numerous flocks and herds of the graziers who occupy it. But for the first six months of the year, whenever the hot weather rains fail, in place of such prairie- like verdure the land looks, as it is often called, " a howling wilderness" — a desert such as the shores of the Red Sea appear to the P. and O. passenger. As the banks or lips of the valleys within which the Punjab rivers flow form the line of demarcation between desert and green pasturage or rich corn land, the change from one to the other is always abrupt and sudden. To the north of the Salt Range lies a broken table- The Northern Ta- 1^"^ enclosed by the range itself, the ble-land. Himalayas and the independent hills abutting on the Kohat,. Peshawar, and Hazara districts. This table-land, with the hills and valleys connected with it, has an area of 17,152 square miles, and is divided into five districts — Peshawar and Kohat (both Trans- Indus), and Hazara, Rawalpindi, and Jhelum (all Cis-Indus). The face of the country is furrowed into innumerable ravines by the streams and occasional torrents from the encircling hills. The soil is generally stiffer and more cohesive than that of the south-western plain. Except in favored valleys, such as that of Peshawar, in which canal irrigation exists, and a narrow submontane tract skirting the outlying-range of the Himalayas, the northern table- land looks at most seasons wild, bleak, and inhospitable. MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. The two tracts which compose the Western Punjab have several common characteristics. In neither are there any industries or large towns „ , , except that of Peshawar. In both, agri- . Tracts north and ^ ' ° south of the Salt Culture, to which may be added the ange compare . rearing of cattle in the " doabs" of the great rivers, is the common occupation. Then Musalmans form the entire rural population. Though divided into tribes and sections, each settled in its own domain and each with a recognized status, all are bound together by devotion to a common creed and by a contemptuous impatience against the yoke of the common enemy — the Hindu usurer. In other respects the two tracts differ. The northern table-land has a longer cold weather, a heavier and more certain rainfall, and consequently securer harvests than the dreary south-western plain, with its droughts, its fiercely hot summers, and its dead-level of sandy expanse. In the north, life is altogether easier to Englishman and peasant alike. In the south, to the former it is a terrestrial purgatory, and to the latter a weary struggle against indebtedness with no hope of rest except in the grave. It is chiefly with the Western Punjab, in which I have Subject of book served for 1 8 years, I intend to deal ini ^'^'^'^" this volume. It is there in the frontier province occupied by powerful Musalman tribes and border- ing for 400 miles on Afghanistan — the home of Musalman independence and fanaticism — that the evils of what is called "our__systenji" are most apparent, riiosr~potentially dangerous for ourselves, and therefore most urgently press- ing for a remedy. " -'■ HISTORICAL AND FISCAL RETROSPECT. CHAPTER II. HISTORICAL AND FISCAL RETROSPECT. Before I attempt to classify, describe, and allocate the races comprising the rural population of the Punjab, but more particularly the dominant Musalman tribes set- tled west of the Jhelum meridian, I shall devote a few pages to a historical and fiscal retrospect. The state of the country _upon annexation will thus be understood. Many centuries before Christ, successive Aryan colo- Colonisation of the "ists had crossed the Indus, and, ever- ^"°j^'^' pressing eastward, had driven out or absorbed the aboriginal occupants, and increased and mul- tiplied into a great and civilized people. Later came Scy- thian swarms. At the time of Alexander the Great's invasion (320 B. C), the Punjab was ruled by Hindu Rajas, the country was studded with walled towns, and Buddhism was for the time obscuring Brahminism. The jungly beds of the Punjab rivers and the desert tracts be- tween them were roamed over by bands of pastoral nomads, probably of Scythian origin, and certainly the ancestors of some of the Jat and nondescript Musalman tribes of to-day. There can be no doubt that from pre-historic up to recent times, bands of mountaineers from Afghanistan and Khorasan, either independently as peaceful colonists, or as a force in an army of invasion, were constantly settling down as graziers and cultivators in thinly occupied tracts in the Punjab. The continuous flo w of immigrants f rom the west — each successive swarm displacing and pushing further east or absorbing a group of earlier squatters — was only finally stopped by the British annexation of the 8 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. Punjab 36 years ago. In popular migrations between India and beyond, there has never been any ebb and flow. Those who have come have remained. The ""pax Indo- Britannica" instead of_ welding the niedley of .miscel- laneous tribes and races into one nation, is, so far as Pun- jab Musalmaniare- -concerned, fusing them into one reh'- glous confraternity of bigots, and widening rather than closing the natural opposition of sentiments and interests which separate them from Hindus. After Alexander came 1,000 years of darkness, il- Moghal conquest lumed early in the seventh century by of Upper India. ^ gleam of light projected over future ages by the itinerary and observations of the gentle Chinese pilgrim, who sought the scriptures of his faith in the fast relapsing home of its birth. Passing over the plundering inroads of Mahmud of Ghazni {A. D. 1001-1030) and the confusion of the next 300 years, we come to the great invasion of Tamerlane {A. D. 1398), and a century and a quarter later, to the conquest of Upper India by Baber, the founder of the Moghal dynasty, which, with one short break, lasted until the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Although wise emperors, of whom the tolerant Akbar Conversion of Hin- ^^^ ''^'^^' eschewed conversion by coer- <3u Rajputs andjats cion. Still from interested motives, and to Islam. perhaps sometimes from conviction, great numbers of Hindus, particularly Rajputs and Jats, embraced Islam between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Proselytising • was energetically pressed during the State ofcountry in the reign of the bigot Aurangzeb. His per- eighteenth century. secution of Sikhs and Mahrattas mould- ed both into military nations. Their rise to power imposed an insurmountable barrier to the progress of Islam in the Punjab. Aurangzeb's death in 1707 found the '']■ HISTORICAL AND FISCAL RETROSPECT. 9 Sikhs supreme in the centre of the Punjab and the Mahrattas in India south of Delhi. In 1761, Ahmed Shah, the last champion of Islam in India, swept through the Punjab, leaving death and desolation in his track, met the Mahrattas at Paniput, and after one of the bloodiest victories of modern times, retired Trans-Indus. During the next 50 years the Mahrattas in the east, the Sikhs in the centre, and the successors of Ahmed Shah in the west, struggled for supremacy in the Punjab. Fam ine, pest ilence, an4_the s word, depopulate d the land. The present century dawned less hopelessly. We In the first half of were masters of Delhi and westwards present century. ^-q the Sutlej. Runjeet Singh was the ruler of the Punjab Proper, and was gradually subduing its western half By 1825 he had obtained a precarious hold over its Trans-Indus tracts. He died in 1839, and his kingdom, after six years of anarchy and two bloody wars with ourselves, passed into our hands in 1849. Although war, famine, and pestilence had then for over a century been devastating the country, their com- bined effects were^only visible in a contraction and con- centration of population into strong centres, in the general absence of trees and relapse into primeval solitude of parts of the Punjab. No destruction of property was possible, which a year or two of peace could not replace. Accu- mulated wealth, except in the form of buried valuables, there was none. The villagers invariably lived in mud hovels or wicker-work sheds and huts ; their household goods were simply earthenware pots and pans, a few sticks of furniture, and some mud-plastered grain-safes ; their live- stock, a few plough, oxen, and goats ; their implements of agriculture, a wooden plough and rake, which any carpenter could put together in an hour. B 10 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. Upon annexation we found that none of the calami- , .„ ties which preceded our rule had dislo- State of village ' communities upon cated or weakened the machinery of rural self-Goyernment, by which villages and tribes had for ages kept their factors together as a collective cultivating or pastoral unit. While Sikhs, Mahrattas, and Afghans, were struggling together for dominion under the political organizations which united them as such, thousands of Cis-Indus village and tribal communities — each a little imperium in imperio, with the working system of which no dominant political party or ruler — Sikhs excepted — ever interfered — blundered through their life-battles as their forefathers had done in partial oblivion of the larger events happening beyond their own limited horizons. Thus it was that within two years after annexation the Punjab was enjoying greater agricultural prosperity than its oldest inhabitants could remember. Trans-Indus, that is, in the tracts between the Indus and the mountains of Afghanistan and Biluchistan, held exclu- sively by dominant Pathan and Biluch tribes, the Sikhs invariably collected revenue at the sword's point. Upon the periodical visitations of their forces, some Revenue system of villagers removed their valuables, and the Sikhs. gygj, jjjgj^ door-frames, to inaccessible asylums in the hills ; others resisted, and others com- pounded. In the Peshawar valley, hardly a village, from the Khyber to the Indus, escaped being plundered and burnt once or oftener. In Bannu, from 1823 to 1845, every third year the country was harried. The Sikh Durbar euphemistically termed the operation " the collection of revenue balances." In plain English, a devouring army marched through the valley, and took and destroyed all it could. Cis-Indus in the Salt Range and northern table-land tracts, Sikh tyranny, whilst leaving village "■I' HISTORICAL AND FISCAL RETROSPECT. communities intact, drove the leading Musalman families and trib es into. exile, or reduced them to the position of tenants. The Ghakhar tribe in particular, whose leading men with their retainers had for generations administered the country from Hazara to the Salt Range fell from their high position to that of mere tillers of the soil. Both south as well as north- of the Salt Range, the revenue system of the Sikhs was simply to disallow any rights in l and except those of the cultivator, to secure to him as much as sufficed for his subsistence and no more, and to the State all the profits of cultivation. There was no fixity qjLfieiivand anywhere. The whole country was sub- divided into districts and farmed out to revenue contrac- tors, whether the highest bidders, or local chiefs, or nomi- nal grantees. In some cases a quarter of the demand was remitted to the farmer to repay the expenses of collection. When service grants were made to some powerful Sikh chief, he generally left the management to agents, who were, in fact, petty farmers. Provided that the revenue was received at Lahore, no inquiries were made as to its mode of collection. If a farmer was murdered he was replaced by another. If an agrariaaxising-eeeurred, it was ct^.nr,p»^ nnf l^y firf. anri gwnrd At every harvest the de- mand varied with the mood and character of the farmer or governor. In the south-west of the pro- Diwan Sawan° .,, ^titi Mull's revenue admi- vmce, With head-quarters at Mooltan, a nistrations. ^.^^^^ farmer, named Sawan Mull, administered his charge from 1829 to 1844 with such rigour and justice that his name is still remembered with respect over an area as large as Scotland. He made life and property secure, caused canals to be cut, and was so successful in creating confidence, that he induced men to sink wells on long leases. In his time some hundreds of wells were sunk. Selfish and short-sighted though the Sikh 12 MUSA-LMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. system was, still it had some virtues, which our's lacks. There being little money in circulation, most payments, including land-revenue, were made in kind. The revenue demand, therefore, corresponded with each season's yield. Self-in- terest limiting rapacity, the cultivator was always left a sufficiency of grain whereon to maintain himself and family until the next harvest. There bei ng neither cre dit, no r money , nor civil courts, serious indebtedness was impossible. If advances of grain were made, the debt was repaid at harvest time, whenever there happened to be a good crop. Finally, no State system of education existing, the agr icultur ists, being ignorant of better things, wejie-Goaient. III]. THE PEOPLE. 13 CHAPTER III. THE PEOPLE. By the latest census of 1881, the population of the Punjab, exclusive of its dependencies, is 18,850,437. Its distribution is shown in the following statement: — Division. Area in square miles. Population. Musalmans Hindus. Sikhs. Total. Eastern Central Northern table-land and Western ■{ Salt Range. South-western _ plain. 25,622 19,218 17,152 44,640 1,141,145 3,699,736 2,329,386 3,352,535 3,769,786 2,574,174 216,103 567,426 1 10, 120 936,740 35,692 37,708 5,021,051 7,210,650 2,581,181 3,957,669 Total 106,632 10,522,802 7,127,489 1,120,260 18,770,551* In the Eastern Punjab 85 per cent, of the popula- Inhabitants of the tion is rural. The great agricultural Eastern Punjab. tribes are Jats and Rajputs. They are still in the Himalayas what they were 2,000 years ago — simple, superstitious, idolatrous Hindus. The seclusion of their quiet valleys has left them children to this day. In the plains, contact with the outer-world and the war of creeds which the Mahomedan conquest of Upper India forced upon its peaceful inhabitants, constrained many to adopt the faith of their masters, and gave to all a manliness and shrewd energy of character which their hill congeners have not yet acquired. But whether Hindus or Musalmans, both are socially and politically one people, ancient tribal custom and the ties of blood being stronger than the sepa- ratist teachings of a half-learnt religion. * The numbers of other religions, vis.. Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, are so insignificant — only 79,886 in all — that I have purposely omitted them. 14 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chaj). As to the agriculturists of the nine central districts, Inhabitants of the ^he two noticeable facts regarding them Central Punjab. are, that those districts— Sialkot except- ed — are the stronghold of Sikhism,and that in them Musal- mans considerably outnumber both Hindus and Sikhs put together. As is the case in the eight districts further east, the central Musalmans are mostly the descendants of Hindu Jats, Rajputs, and minor agricultural tribes, converted during the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb (1658-1707). Being stronger in numbers than their co-religionists eastwards, and the whole world to the west, so far their knowledge of it goes, presenting to their eyes one compact block of Musalman tribes, their Mahomedanism is of a more decided type than it is in the eastern districts. Up to the present time, however, the whole rural population of the Punjab east of the Jhelum meridian, whether Hindus or Musal- mans, may be regarded, for all administrative purposes, as one people. They are untainted with religious animosi- ties. They live side by side as peaceful cultivators, in happy indifference to the ptetty jealousies which superior knowledge stirs~ up in the hearts of their Hindu and Musalman^ethren in the towns. There is, however, in Islam, wherever and in whatever degree of devotional intensity it exists, a latent ferocity which a small cause ^, ^ , . , may at any time arouse into action- Mahomedan revival. Moreover, throughout the Punjab, if not throughout the whole Musalman world, a great Mahomedan revival has for some years been gathering strength. It began amongst the educated classes in the towns, and is slowly leavening the masses throughout the country. This Mahomedan awakening is not a movement to be altogether encouraged. It has not begun with a con- sciousness of deficiencies and a determination to improve. It aims rather at a drawing together of all believers, with ^^^ ]■ THE PEOPLE. IS a view, by the mere strength of numbers and united pur- pose, to the acquisition of material concessions. The fatalistic teachings of the prophet have been an accursed inheritance for all who have accepted them. Sikhism and Hinduism do not interfere with a man's natural desire to better himself in the world by his own exertions. Maho- medanism teaches its disciple s to accept every „naisZEu;tune a s^ tl^e w ,i1,l nf " Al'ah " It unfits him for the struggle of life. Accordingly, we find, wherever Sikhs, Hindus, and Musalmans cultivate side by side, that the last-named are the worst farmers. Mr. Denzil Ibbetson has, at pages 103-104 of Volume I of his Punjab Census Report, admirably, though, in the case of Musalmans, too unfavourably, summarized the effects of the three religions, — Hinduism, Mahomedanism, and Sikhism, — upon character. I cannot do better than quote here what he has written. As to Hinduism, he says : — The effect of Hinduism upon the character of its followers •^ct . r TT- J • is, perhaps, best described as being wholly Effect of Hinduism ' ^.. \^ . ■,, ... , -^l •' on character. negative. It troubles their souls with no problems, or conduct, or belief; it stirs them to no enthusiasm, either political or religious ; it seeks no prose- lytes ; it preaches no persecution ; it is content to live and to let live. The characteristic of the Hindu is quiet, contented, and thrift. He tills his field ; he feeds his Brahmin ; he lets his womenfolk worship their gods, and accompanies them to the yearly festival at the local shrine ; and his chief ambition is to build a brick-house, and to waste more money than his neighbour at his daughter's wedding. As to Sikhism, he writes : — The Sikh Jats of the Punjab are proverbially " the finest peasantry in India." Much no doubt is due ' ^^"'' to the sturdy independence and resolute industry which characterise the Jat of our eastern plans, whatever his religion. But much is also due to the freedom and boldness which the Sikh has inherited from the traditions of the Khalsa. I know of nothing more striking in the history oflndia thawthe bravery with which the Sikh fought against us, the contented cheerfulness with which he seems to have accepted defeat, and the loyalty with which he now serves and obeys us. It is barely 1 6 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. 30 years since the Khalsa was the ruling power in the land, yet outside a few fanatical bodies, there is, so far as we know, no secret repining, no hankering after what has passed away. But the Sikh retains the energy and determination which made his name renowned, and, though still inclined to military service, car- ries them into the more peaceful pursuits of husbandry. In 1853 Sir Richard Temple wrote: — " The staunch foot-soldier has become the sturdy cultivator, and the brave officer is now the village elder; and their children now grasp the plough with the same strong hand with which the father wielded the sword." The prohibition against the use of tobacco has driven them to spirits and drugs, which are not unseldom indulged in to excess. But the evil is largely confined to the wealthier classes, and is more than counterbalanced by the manly love of field sports and open- air exercise, which their freedom from restraint in the matter of taking animal life and their natural pride, exercising and display- ing that freedom, have engendered in them. The Sikh is more independent, more brave, more manly, than the Hindu, and no whit less industrious and thrifty ; while he is less conceited than the Musajman, and not devoured by that carking discontent which so often seems to suppress the latter. Finally, as to the effect of Islam upon the character of its followers, Mr. Ibbetson writes with caustic severity : — It is curious how markedly for evil is the influence which Effect of Islam conversion, to even the most impure form of Mahomedanism, has upon the character of the Punjab villager ; how invariably it fills him with false pride and conceit, disinclines him for honest toil, and renders him more ex- travagant, less thrifty, less contented, and less well-to-do, than his Hindu neighbour. It is natural enough that the Pathan or Biluch of the frontier, but lately reclaimed from the wild independence of his native hills, should still consider fighting as the one occupation worthy of his attention. It is hardly to be wondered at that the still semi-nomad Musalman tribes of the western plains should look upon the ceaseless labour of the husbandman as irksome. When we move through a tract inhabited by Hindus and Musal- mans belonging to the same tribe, descended from the same ancestor, and living under the same conditions, and find that as we pass each village, each field, each house, we can tell the religion of its owner by the greater idleness, poverty, and pretension, which mark the Musalman, it is difficult to suggest any explanation of the fact. It can hardly be that the Musalman branch of a village enjoyed under the Mahomedan Emperors any such material advantage over their Hindu brethren as could develop habits of pride and extravagance, which should survive generations of equality, and yet, whatever the reason, the existence m]- THE PEOPLE, 17 of the difference is beyond a doubt. The Musalman seems to think that his duty is completely performed when he has pro- claimed his belief in one God, and that it is the business of Providence to see to the rest ; and when he finds his stomach empty, he has a strong tendency to blame the Government, and to be exceedingly discontented with everybody but himself His Hindu brother asks little, either of his gods or of his governors, save that they should let him alone ; but he rises early, and late takes rest, and contentedly eats the Isread of carefulness. I speak of those parts of the province where the two religions are to be found side by side among the peasantry. Where either prevails to the exclusion of the other, the characteristics of the people may be, and probably are, tribal, rather than due to any difference of religion. Having glanced at the composition and salient charac- Musalman tribes of terlstics of the inhabitants of the Pun- the Western Punjab, j^b east of Jhelum meridian, I now proceed to describe the Musalman tribes occupying the Western Punjab in some detail. The total population of the tract is, as we have seen, nearly six and a half millions, thus distributed :-=- Musalmans ... ... 5,682,000, or 87 per cent. Hindus ... ... 783,000, „ 12 „ Sikhs ... ... 73>ooo, „ i „ Total ... 6,538,000 Rather more than three lakhs of the above are Urban popuiationsof Urban, distributed over sixty-seven mu- the Western Punjab, nicipal towns, of which Only three have a population of over 20,000, viz., Peshawar, 59,000; Mooltan, 57,000 ; and Rawalpindi, 25,000. Half of the other towns have populations of over 2,500 and under 5,000, and are rather villages with bazars than towns. Many of the so-called towns depend for their existence, as such, on the propinquity of a military cantonment, such as that of Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Edwardesabad in the Bannu district, and Kohat. As Hindus have the whole trade of the province in their hands, it is natural that they should compose the bulk of the urban population. C i8 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [ Chap. Accordingly, we find that quite two-thirds of the residents of towns are Hindus. Of the whole population, 91 per cent, is rural, and of that population 92 per cent, are Musalmans. The following table shows the relative numbers of Dominant Musal- the chief Musalman tribes and castes, man tribes. jj^ order of political importance in their respective localities : — Name of tribe or caste. Number. Pathans (Afghans). 745,000 19 10 II Siluches. Jats. Rajputs (535.000)^ including | Karialsj 10,000 Khakhars, 36,000 I Kharrals, 19,000 J Syads, Shekhs, 1 and Uluma. J Awans. Gujars. Ghakhars. MoghBls and Turks, Arains including Bhagwans. Miscellaneous, ,,. Total ... 279,000 1,082,000 600,000 C4 2,2 68,00c 4,000,000 Distribution. Chiefly in the Hazara district, and Trans-Indus, as far south as the southern boundary of the Dera- Ismail-Khan district. Trans-Indus, in the Dera-Ghazi- Khan district, also in adjacent Cis-Indus tracts. Thickest throughout the south- western plain, but to be found everywhere. Throughout submontane tracts in the northern table-land (Cis-In- dus), also south of the Salt Range in the Mooltan, Jhang, and Montgomery districts. Everywhere, but thickest north of the Salt Range. Throughout Gujrat and the northern table-land (Cis-Indus) generally, also in the Peshawar valley. Salt Range, and Kohat. Throughout Gujrat and the north- ern table-land (Cis-Indus) gene- rally, also in the Peshawar valley. Almost exclusively in the Rawal- pindi, Hazara, and Jhelum dis- tricts of the northern table- land. North-west corner of northern table-land, viz., in the Rawal- pindi, Hazara, and Peshawar dis- tricts. Everywhere. Ditto. '"]• THE PEOPLE. 19 The remaining two and a half millions of Musalmans belong to a variety of insignificant Salman tribes and tribes and castes, and are found through- out most districts interspersed with the general population. Many are cultivators, and most, di- rectly or indirectly, depend on agriculture for their liveli- hood. Some are refugees from neighbouring states, as for instance, Cashmiris, who number a lakh, and are chiefly concentrated in Rawalpindi, Shahpur, and Ludhiana. Of the menial and artisan classes, it is only necessary to mention that every rural community maintains a staff of village servants, such as scavengers, carpenters, workers in leather, and blacksmiths, who receive for their ser- vices fixed grain-payments at harvest time. There is also in every village a number of low caste professionals, — barbers, weavers, potters, oil-pressers, dyers and washers, butchers, &c. — all useful members of every cultivating republic, — who, like the village menials, in addition to practising their hereditary callings, also work as field labourers or cultivators, and not unfrequently own land. The number of the village menial and professional classes aggregate over a million and a quarter. Watermen num- ber 225,000 ; workers in metals, 45,000 ; and Musalman traders known as Khojahs and Pir^chas — mostly converts from Hinduism — 30,000. A miscellaneous assortment of low castes, nomads, and beggars, many of whom do field work at harvest time, make up the complement. 30 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. CHAPTER IV. THE MUSALMAN TRIBES OF THE WESTERN PUNJAB . Reverting to the dominant agricultural tribes, the leading characteristics of each will now be described in the order followed in the table given at page 1 8.* I. — Pathans— 745,000. All those whose mother-tongue is Pushto, are indis- criminately styled Pathans or Afghans F3.tli9.nS by the natives of India. Whether origin- ally distinct or not, both are now practically one race, and have common characteristics. They are divided into numer- ous tribes, sections, and sub-sections, each with a common ancestor, from whom its distinctive name is known. Many trace their common descent from Kesh, the father of Saul, first King of Israel, and all take pride in an accurate ac- quaintance with their genealogical trees. The ancestors of the various tribes settled along our North- West Frontier in Hazara, Cis-Indus, and in our Trans-Indus districts, from Peshawar on the north to Vehowa, 250 miles to the south, were early converted to Islam, and have, after various in- ter-tribal movements in their mountain homes beyond our border, been gradually pushed eastwards into their pre- sent locations within the last few hundred years. South of Kohat their colonisation of the country lying between the Suliman Range and the valley of the Indus, was effect- ed by ousting or absorbing and reducing to depend- ence the earlier occupants, particularly Jats. A final * In Chapters III, IV, and V, I have generally followed the figures and facts of Mr, Ibbetson's Punjab Census Report, supplementing the latter with information drawn from personal knowledge. IV]. ■j-jjE MUSALMAN TRIBES OF THE WESTERN PUNJAB. Stop was put to it by the British annexation of the Pun- jab. Since then, owing to the continuous non-intervention policy of Government, as well as to the divergence of interests which that policy encouraged, intercourse be- tween low-land Pathans, who are British subjects, and their independent high-land neighbours, has greatly dimin- ished. Still it sufficiently exists to keep mutual sympa- thy alive in all matters which do not directly affect the conflicting material interests of either. The right of asy- lum is never denied by independent hillmen to a refugee from British justice. The exciting cause of many fron- tier blockades and military expeditions has been due to the warmth with which a hill tribe has taken up an out- law's case. Physically, Pathans are fine men — tall, strong, and active. They make good soldiers, but bad husband- men. The restraints of discipline or love of home oper- ates to prevent any of the youth of some tribes from tak- ing service in our native army. But, generally, Pathans enlist freely, and fight splendidly for us. At home, Pathans are democrats to a man, every able-bodied man having an equal voice in whatever affects the common weal. Individually they are proud, suspicious, and treacherous. The truth of their saying — Afghdn be imdn (faithless) — is laughingly acknowledged by themselves. They are all bigoted and fanatical Mahomedans, entirely under the influence of their priests, who swarm wherever the soil is rich and fertile. They are impatient of control of any sort. If consulted to-morrow, a majority — Marwats and, possibly, Khataks excepted— would, from mere love of de- vilry, vote for the abolition of British rule, although aware that our withdrawal would lead to anarchy. In their own hills the Hindu shop-keeper and money-lender is still a humble dependent, who dares not own land. In the plains we are rapidly making him the master of his 2 2 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. natural land ; and the latter consequently, whilst despising him as a coward, yet hates and fears him. In Tank, in the Dera-Ismail-Khan district, in January 1 88 1, a ru- moured reverse to our army in Afghanistan caused the whole Pathan population to rise, and the first use they made of their temporary authority, was to wreak vengeance on their Hindu creditors. II. — BiLUCHES — 279,000. They are of Arab descent, and appear to have been gradually thrust eastwards into Sindh in Biluches. the fifteenth century, whence they spread northwards up the Indus Valley and through the southern portion of the Suliman Range, subjecting in their progress many Jat tribes. Where strong in numbers, as in Dera- Ghazi-Khan, their tribal organisation is as perfect in Bri- tish territory as it is in the hills of Biluchistan. They are the inveterate foes of all Pathans, and contrast favourably with them in many respects, being unbigoted, truthful, simple-minded, tractable, and owing unfaltering allegiance to their tribal chiefs. Despising labour and loving sport, they are bad husbandmen, but good riders. To own a mare is the ambition of every true Biluch. His dry climate makes him a grazier rather than a grower of corn. He is a nomad by force of circumstances, an Esau by nature, and an Ismaelite from love of fighting, his hand being against all who are not his brethren. Like the Pathan, he has a lordly disdain for the Hindu, and terms him contemptuously Kirdr, whether trader, money-lender, or otherwise. Trans-Indus the strength of the clan organisations, the support wisely bestowed by Govern- ment on the authority of tribal chiefs, and the local policy of the earlier Deputy Commissioners, have combined to keep the Kirdr to his true vocation, that of trader and IV]. THE MUSALMAN TRIBES OF THE WESTERN PUNJAB. 23 petty money-lender ; hence the Biluch is, or rather was, until a few years ago, still lord of his own lands. Legal practitioners are now slowly bringing Dera- Evil effect of in- Ghazi-Khan within the sphere of their troduction of pleaders mischievous business operations.* The railway extension to the Kureshi Ferry on the Indus, opposite Dera-Ghazi-Khan, will be open- ed in a few months, and with that the district will be invaded by hungry pleaders and mukhtdrs, and then the demoralisation of the Biluches and the disintegration of the clan organisation will go on rapidly. Cis-Indus the Biluches hold villages rather than tracts, have lost most of their tribal characteristics, and have settled down into the position of easy-going landlords and indifferent cultivators. When a Biluch takes military service, he makes a good sepoy. As a rule, love of home and perhaps the irksome- ness of discipline, make a soldier's life unattractive to him. Still many do enlist, and there are, I believe, purely Biluch regiments in the Bombay army. His idiosyncrasies would be met, were irregular corps raised on the model of the Cossack regimental system, for local service in Biluchistan and beyond, in war time. A corps of Biluch guides has, I believe, been lately raised in the Bolan Pass and elsewhere in Biluchistan. * To give an instance. Some years ago a boundary case between the Maziri and the Drishak clans was settled on the spot in an irregular, but still just, manner, by a late Deputy Commissioner of the district. When that Deputy Commissioner had been transferred, the Drishak chief went to Lahore, and finding a civil action was still open to him, brought a suit in the native Judge's Court at Dera-Ghazi-Khan. I was on circuit in the spring of 1885, in the Muzaffargarh district, and there first met the Maziri chief returning in triumph with an English pleader from Lahore. Some miles further on I met the Drishak chief's agent, and told him what his master's rival had done. He laughed, and said he had failed to get an Englishman, but bad brought back two native pleaders instead. Neither chief would, a few years previously, have dreamt of appealing to the law and to lawyers in order to dispute his Deputy Commissioner's order. Now the two chiefs will spend thousands of rupees, and in the end the Deputy Commissioner's order will be maintained or a worse one given, 24 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [ Chap^ 1 1 1 . — J ATS — 1 ,082,000. The numerous tribes, now comprehensively termed Musalman Jats, are undoubtedly of mixed Aryan and Scythian origin, include all those strong agricultural and pastoral tribes who have no distinctive ethnology of their own, and who by popular voice have failed to make good a claim to Rajput descent. They compose the great body of the peasantry in the south-western plains. Trans-Indus the superior cohesion and fighting powers of Pathans and Biluches has in recent times reduced them to a less important social and political status than they have for centuries held on the Cis-Indus side. They were converted to Islam in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Having changed their religion to suit their interests, it is no reproach to them to say that their new creed sits as lightly on them as does Christianity on most Englishmen. Amongst them there is probably a greater percentage of devout Mahomedans than of truly pious Christians amongst us. The great mass of them believe vaguely in God and his Prophet, and content them- selves by repeating the creed occasionally as their whole confession of faith, and by accepting as the will of God any misfortune which may befall them. Comprising as they do a congeries of different tribes, not one of whose origins has been certainly ascertained, it is difficult to sum up their salient characteristics in a few lines. Physically, the Mahomedan Jat, wherever found , is a fine man : mentally, he is an unaspiring dunce. From the Jhelum meridian he is progressively westwards, more and more hopelessly stupid, and indifferent to all things outside his hereditary calling. Collectively, the Jats have been well described in the following lines* : — From an economical and administrative point of view he is the husbandman, the peasant, the revenue-payer par excellence * Page 221 of Census Report, Pmtjab, 1881, Vol. I, para, 423. IV]. THE MDSALMAN TRIBES OF THE WESTERN PUNJAB. 25 of the province. His manners do not bear the impress of generations of wild freedom which marks the races of our frontier mountains. But he is more honest, more industrious, more sturdy,, and no less manly than they. Sturdy independence indeed and patient, vigorous labour are his strongest characteris- tics. The Jat is, of all Punjab- races, the most impatient of tribal or communal control, and the one which asserts the freedom of the individual most strongly. In tracts where, as in Rohtak, the Jat tribes have the field- to- themselves, and are compelled, in default of rival castes as enemies, to fall back upon each other for somebody tO' quarrel with-, the tribal ties are strong. But^ as a rule,, a Jat is a man who does what seems right in bis own eyeS) and . sometimes what seems wrong also, and will not be said nay by any man. I do not mean, however, that he is turbulent : as a rule, he is very far from being so. He is independent, and he is self-willed ;, but he is reasonable, peaceably inclined if left alone, and not difficult to manage. He is usually content to cultivate his fields and pay his revenue in peace and quietness if people will let him do so ; though, when he does go wrong, he " takes to anything, from gambling to- murder, with perhaps a preference for stealing other people's wives and cattle * * * • " Such is the Jat peasant As such,, he falls an. easy- prey to the money-lender. His rustic speech,. whicL some one has well said changes every ten miles, is bauely com- prehensible to a few of our best Settlement and District Officers, and is not well understood, hy the class of natives termed Munsiffs, who now decide disputes between him and his- banker. The Jat landed proprietor is, however, often a man of energy and. intelligence, a good manager and successful farmer.* I v.— Rajputs — 600,000;. The Rajput tribes are all of Aryan stock, and are found intermixed with those classed as Jats. Those latter, however, preponder- ate in the south-western plain, whereas the former are most numerous in the Salt Range, in Jhang, and Montgo- mery, and throughout the northern table-land Cis-Indus. * Mooltan Settlement Report, page 29. D 26 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS, [ Ch«p. The line of distinction between the two is very fine. Only- noble tribes of undoubtedly Hindu origin, who have, at some period in history, admittedly risen to political eminence, are now recognised as Musalman Rajputs. Their conversion to Islam dates probably like that of the less aristocratic Jats from the fourteenth century. Jats are essentially simple, whereas Rajputs are gentlefolk, and however poor, very proud of their gentility. Looking on manual labour as derogatory, they for centuries main- tained themselves as graziers and fighters, and have only recently subsided into the position of peaceful cultivators. They left the production of corn to the yeomanry of the land — the Jats and inferior castes — who paid them as territorial lords a portion of each crop. When the Sikh commonwealth became all-powerful, that warrior confede- racy disregarded such pretensions. Materiall}'- and politi- cally, the Sikh Government gained by the practical ap- plication of its doctrine, that in tracts held by con- quered tribes the State is the sole landlord, and, as such, entitled , to the whole rent. The Rajput tribes, after a vain resistance, succumbed to superior force, and had to starve or become tillers of the soil. Under the equal justice of British rule, many have recovered certain seignorial rights, which were in abeyance during the Sikh dominion. As, however, the feudal instinct has always been strong amongst Rajputs, the authority of the tribal chiefs was never lost ; consequently it is families, rather than clans, who have specially benefited by the conserva- tive tendency of British administrators. Collectively, Mu- salman Rajputs are a high-spirited people, proud of their illustrious lineage, and ever regretfully mindful of their -past greatness. The poorer clans are inferior as cultivators to the Musalman Jats, being less energetic and more thrift- less. The mofe distinguished Clans, and particularly their '^ • THE MUSALMAN TRIBES OF THE WESTERN PUNJAB. 2 With the death of Runjeet Singh, the first and last Effect of Runjeet King of the Sikhs, in 1 844, the machin- Singh's death. gfy by which he had maintained his revenue system for upwards of a quarter of a century, was dislocated, and for a few brief years anarchy pre- vailed throughout the Punjab. In the Musalman tracts, the respite, such as it was, gave the dominant clans and families the opportunity to revive and partially recover rights which had been in abeyance for the previous generation or more. When, in 1849, the Punjab became an integral part The Punjab after of British India, the first duties of our annexation. earliest administrators were to p acify the country and secure the payment of the land revenue. There was no leisure for an inquiry into tenures, nor was the time yet come when such inquiry could have had any 46 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. beneficial result. Land was plentiful, cultivators were scarce : " individual rights " was a term hardly yet com- prehended : what rights were understood wSre" those of the tribe or village collectively. Thus, for some years after annexation, dominant tribes and families obtained a further respite wherein to consolidate and legalise their levy of proprietary dues of sorts. As the Sikhs, though good soldiers, were also good farmers, they at once settled down, under our strong rule, into peaceful tillers of the soil, and our civil officers obtained leisure to make a land revenue settlement of the country. They found that the SMis, besides taking the landlord's share of the produce, [had also levied cesses from cultivators, — the whole of the date and mango crops, where such trees grew, a poll-tax on artisans, camels, buffaloes, sheep and goats, and heavy transit and town duties. No tax seems to have been paid by the shop-keeping Bunniah class at all, because they were, except in towns, merely poor dependents of the cultivating classes. I draw particular attention to this fact. We retained the cattle tax, abolished all other cesses Fixed cash assess- ^"^ dues, substituted individual for ments imposed. collective_ Ownership of land, and con- verted the share of each harvest paid by the cultivators, which he had generally paid in kind, into a fixe d cas h assessment. As the assessments had to be very rapidly conducted — each English officer having to make a settle- ment with the headmen of from i,ooo to 3,000 different villages in the course of one cold weather's tour — a great many errors were made. No reliable data for assessment existed. The Sikh records, such as were found, only showed the gross demand. Remissions, deductions, and, above all, unrealised balances, were unascertainable. Then most of the early district officers were young, untrained, military men. The assessment imposed was in each case the VI ]. THE REVENUE SYSTEM IN THE PUNJAB CONTRASTED. 47 assumed average collections of the three preceding years, converted into cash at the market rates of the day, less a deduction, for the sake of safety, of from 1 5 to 20 per cent. In most cases a committee of village elders accepted the demand, and contracted to pay it for a short term of years. In many cases middlemen — former sub-collectors or Effects of peace and ^^^^^ revenue farmers— agreed to pay security : change in the assessment, the cultivators refusing revenue system, I to engage. The dearness of corned money and the smallness of the cultivated area, had hitherto kept up prices, and had they continued high, the assessments made immediately after annexation would have been — making a fair allowance for unavoidable in- equalities — fairly equitable. Peace and security, how- ever, expanded the cultivated area enormously; and the presence of a large military force in the Punjab, together with the undertaking of great public works, such as the Grand Trunk Road and barracks, doubled the money circulation. " THose" causes reduced the money- value of agricultural produce from 50 to 100 per cent. The result was ruin for thousands of cultivat ors, in- deb tedne ss for tens of thousands, and the beginnings of a hold on the land for astute and wealthy middle- men. As soon as possible, the assessments were every- where revised. What is called summary settlements were made Summary land re- and village boundaries demarcated. The venue settlements. object of such settlements being fiscal, no authoritative investigation into tenures took place. As a rule, tlie person found in cultivating possession was treated as the proprietor and settled with. The general result of summary settlements effected in 1852 and the following years, was an all-round reduction of assessment ^.8 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. of from lo to 20 per cent. When the enormous extension of the cultivated area is considered, the fact that three or four years after annexation such reductions were found necessary, shows how severe the earHest assessments were, and speaks volumes for the patience of the people. Shortly afterwards what is called regular settlements Regular settle- ^^^e undertaken in many districts. The "'^"'^- object of such settlements was partly fiscal, but chiefly the preparation of what is called the re- cord of rights, — i. e., tenures of every sort were investigateHT determined, and recorded. The result is a sort of elaborate Doomsday Book, which permanently fixes individual rights in land and water. For the 14 Musalman districts of the Punjab, the first regular settlement of a district was completed nearly a quarter of a century ago, and the last — that of Kohat — only the other day. The slow deliberation with which such work was undertaken in the western districts of Their effect. , t^ • , , . , , . >;;:::?' the Punjab, greatly assisted dommant tribes and families, and sagacious individuals, in perfect- ing titles to proprietary dues, which, if investigated im- mediately after annexation, would have been found to have been either non-existent, of uncertain continuity, or simply State remissions made for revenue purposes. As a regular settlement fixed the Government demand for 20 or 30 years, and, above all, defined individual rights, and so gave each person, with any recorded intergatJn land, a clear title, the effect of such settlements was everywhere both to largely appr eciate the market-value of land a nd Ithe cre dit of those whose titles to rnarketable interests 'Tiad b een esta blished. Without doubt a grave error was made upon annexation, in suddenly substitu^^ for an elastic kind of assessment a fixed cash assessment — to say VI]. THE REVENUE SYSTEM IN THE PUNJAB CONTRASTED. 49 nothing of its severity. Although t his mistake originate d a good deal of the existin g peasant indeb tedness, no disastrous consequences would have en sued -Via H wp Effect of gift of full "°* als o at J he_sarpp timp rnnvprtpd proprietary rights in collective into individual ow nership of land to individuals. ; — - T" ~~ land, plus the right to alienate it at pleasure.^_JB}i-so doing we made an unconditional gift of a valuable estate to every peasant proprietor in the Pun- jab, and raise d his credit fro m-the— fiafm'&p— U-mit of the surplu s of an occasional good crop, to the mark et-value of the jroprietary right conf erred. It is difficult for us now to realise the revolution effected in the status and relations of peasants and shop-keepers by the innQjm* tions introduce d in 1.84 9-50. Until then the proprietary unit had been the tribe or community collectively, individual rights in land being restricted to the plot each member actually cultivated. Alienat ions of a cu lti- vatir ig right, u nless, approved, by th^ whole body of-share- holders, werejmpossible; his borrowing power was limited to a few rupees, recoverable only at harvest time ; his Bunniah.,wasjng£eJy hi^ humhle gp.i:va.nl:-ajid art^punt-ant ; he himself in worldly wisdom was as ignorant as a wild beast. For a hundred generations he had pastured his cattle, sown and reaped his scanty crop, and paid as little of it as he could to the Government of the day, and that little either through his aforesaid servant and accountant, or some intelligent chief or headman. Such terms as " individual rights," " property," " the purchasing power of money," " credit," " attachment and sale," were incomprehensibly meaningless to him. In one day the „ . old order passed away, and gave place Ruinous conse- ^ f a r quences of such a to a new one, which imposed upon this sudden gift. ... , -r. — :~r^ -i . unsophisticated Punjabi^ ^^.responsibi- lity to which he was unequal, in that he who had never so MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. handled coin in his life before, was required to pay to his Government twice a year a fixed sum of money — crop or no crop. To his surprise and delight he found that his formerly petty borrowing powers were now practically un- limited, his Bunniah being ready to accommodate him to any extent. If, in his newly-discovered freedom, he was reckless and improvident, the blamewas not his, but thatofJiis_rule£5- Were the children in all the Board Foolishness of the schools in Great Britain suddenly let gift illustrated. joose in London, each with fifty golden sovereigns in his pocket, would it be right to blame them or the donors who had given them their holiday, if, instead of putting their money in the Savings Bank, they spent it foolishly? Again, if Parliament were suddenly to abolish guardians and put all monied wards in the untrammelled possession of their estates, most minors would run through their properties before attaining majority, and the world at large, as well as the pauperised minors, when arrived at years of discretion, would con- demn the act of emancipation as one of folly. Yet that is exactly wha l. was_ uiQne-,apcia---&&-~aa)a&xatiQn- of- JJie Punjab, thr oughout its Musalman tracts at least. To the Bunniah class the change to fixed cash assess- „, ., . ,, ments, the creation of individual rights The gift IS an eldo- _ _ ° rado to money-lend- in lands, and the introductiQn_of_j;ivil '"^ "^ ^ ■ co urts administering laws and procedure code framed on European models, were as welcome as would be the succession to a great estate of an impecunious Anglo-Indian, or the discovery of a gold mine on his land to an Australian settler. With their inherited business habits, their want of sympathy for Musalmans, their unscrupulous greed for gain, their established position as accountants and factors for the agricultural population, their monopoly of education, of general intelligence, and of ^']- THE REVENUE SYSTEM IN THE PUNJAB CONTRASTED. 51 trade — most particularly of money-lending (the taking of interest being unlawful for a Musalman*)— prospects of wealth and position, never before attained in their history, were opened for the Bunniah class. The ultimate diversion of a large part of the profits of Its ultimate effect cultivation into their pockets, their eleva- retarded by two tion to the position of landlords, and the causes. degradation of the peasantry to that of tenants, were secured to them. The pr oce.ss was slow at first owing to the operation of two cause s. Titles were everywhere insecure until determined and recorded at a regular settlement, in which the investigations and recording of tenures was made, and that, as we have seen, was not effected in some districts until many years after annexation. Then for many years civil courts were few, and guided by reason and conscience. The introduction of the elaborate substantive law nqwL^dministered~m our civil courts, of a strict code of Civil Procedure, of legal practitioners, and of all those corn^licatedjdeviees-eteivilised Europe, which benefit the rich and terrorize the poor, was a' matter of slow evolutiorLiaJiie-Punjab. For many years, too, the peasant's margin of credit was so great that he suc- ceeded in scraping along by renewing his bonds at long in- tervals, f and by making over to his creditor the surplus produce of_ the annually extended area under the plough. That the Musalman peasant is a s hort-sighted and l ong-- Improvidence of sufferi ng animal, is d emonstrated from Musalman peasants. jjjg history during the last twenty years. So long as the paternal acres remain in his possession, and * A few Musalmans here and there Cis-Indus openly lend money on interest, braving the scorn of their co-religionists. On the frontier, in fact wherever Mahomedanism is dominant, he who hoards money, or is suspected of secretly lending it out on interest, is reviled and despised as a sordid rene- gade. With Musalmans liberality is the greatest of all virtues ; parsimony the meanest of all vices. t See page 74, on gradual reduction of period of limitation from twelve years to what it is now. 52 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. the pinch of actual poverty is not felt, he is content to rub along from day to day, deliberately oblivious of accumulating debts until Fate's decree removes him to paradise. From the causes already mentioned, though a good dealofind ebt- edness -waaJncur red within the first decade of our r ule, the area of land alienated to non-agriculturists in that period was small. Except in localities in which summary settle- ments had broken down in consequence of over-assess- ment, no popular discontent at the insidi ous tran sfer of the rights of the people of the soil to nerveless aliens anywhere manifested its df before i860. It cannot be doubted that the loyalty of the Punjab peasantry during the Sepoy Mutiny was largely due to the absence, in 1857-58, of good cause for agrarian discontent. In the older Gangetic districts of the N.-W. Provinces, that Mutiny was largely taken advant- age of by the agriculturists to wreak their vengeance on the money-lenders and auction-purchasers who had dispos- sessed them. For the Western Punjab the alienations of land Compulsoryaliena- ^° Outsiders may be said to have seriously tions of land to Bun- begun between 1860 and 1 870. As the niahs. ~7 ~~"~~7~r— i— — ■ regular settlements of thetrontier districts were the last effected in the province, in those districts the change was forced on the notice of Government a few years later than in the older-settled districts Cis-Indus. Between 1 860 and 1 870, by rneaas_Q Liudicial d ecisions and revision ofjettLements — both summary and regular — titles had been everywhere, except on the frontier, ascertained and recorded, a system for the collection of annual agricultural statistics had been elaborated, and the value of lan d had become understood even by the peasantry themselves. Energetic District and Settlement Officers had from „. , , . , time to time drawn the attention of the Mistaken views of early Punjab revenue Punjab Government to the subject of authorities. . , , . , . , , . agricultural indebtedness and its con- VI]. THE REVENUE SYSTEM IN THE PUNJAB CONTRASTED. S3 sequences, but without result. The stan dard of comf ort of all classes had risen : the people generally were manifest- ly more prosperous than they had been lo or 20 years before : acrnViiH-nrigt'^ wprp hptter hcm^pr\ and clothed ^ spen t more on betrothals, marriages, and deaths,Jhan ever before : their land revenue- assessments were, when viewed ab- solutely, light, not amounting to more than one-sixth of an average yield : if the inelasticity of a fixed land revenue assessment compelled them to borrow in bad years, still their assessments were, in theory, very light, falling at less than a quarter of an average yield : the surplus of good harvests must recoup the losses of poor or of no harvests: the principle of -fixity^ of demand must not be impugned: elasticity would demoralise the people: a year or two of misfortune would inculcate prudence. As for the alienatio n of land to money-lenders, the investment of capital in land was a sign of prosperity and of confi- dence in the stability of the British rule : th e village m oney- lender wj^ pj ^^r^'^'^^r^r factor in. the agricult ural economy of India, was coeval with agriculture, and could not be disposed with. By such paracjoxes^ and t_ruisms_the revenue authorities of the day satisfied themselves that the insidious change in the relationship between cultiva- tor and Bunniah, which District Officers sometimes ven- tured to think dangerous, was a con comitant o £prog'-ess and_£rg5pe«*y- 54 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. CHAPTER VII. AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS THROUGHOUT INDIA AND RELIEF ACTS. The "people of India"- are the dumb toiling millions Who are the "peo- °f peasants inhabiting the villages, ham- pie of India ? " |g^.g^ ^j^^j scattered homesteads of the land. The town-bred exotics who are annually forced through. in our educational hot-houses, and glibly mouth the phrase, whilst posing as representatives of that people, have less claim to the title than the puny operatives of our manufacturing towns have of being typical specimens of John Bull. Before further considei'ing the position of the section of the " people of India" who occupy the western half of the Punjab, a general survey of that of their fellow agricul- turists elsewhere throughout the Peninsula will be useful. Modern British India dates from the Sepoy Mutiny of Modern British i^S/. That revolution changed an estate ^""^"^- managed on purely business principles into an Empire governed for the good of its inhabitants. The hi.sto ry of the Ecrowth- oi-ijhe. IlQnibl.e F.afrtr- India Com- pany's po wer in India clo.sd y-res£mbks-.that-aLRLLaaia in CentralAsia. The morality of a transaction was little con- sidered when it clashed with personal interests. In pre- Mutiny days the situation in Northern India was always critical and the treasury generally empty. How to keep what had been acquired and get more on oppor- tunity, were the ever-present problems, the answers to which depended upon a full treasury and a quiet people. In those stirring times there was no leisure for the elaborate VII]. AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 55 niceties of the administration of to-day. It thus happened that as territory after territory was absorbed, we_blindly dives ted ourselves of the i mmediate ownership of the soil, .and conferred it upon its a ctual occirpants, or, when it suited us, upon local chiefs or useful middlemen, exacting in return a quit-rent in cash, which now amounts to £ 22,000,000 annually, or about one-third of the Imperial revenue of India. Throughout three-fourths of the Madras Presidency and Bombay and Mad- two-thirds of that of Bombay, the " ryot," ras tenures. ^s the cultivator is Called, has been direct- ly settled with. His tenure is very simple, and only wants elasticity to be ideally perfect. Each parcel of land has a fixed quit revenue imposed on it : the cultivating ryot may alienate his occupancy rights or throw them up when he pleases. Throughout the rest of Madras and Bombay, interposed between the Government and the cultivator are large landlords with whom the settlement has gener- Permanent settle- ^^W been made. In Bengal the much- ment in Lower Bengal, abused and short-sighted permanent settlement was made about 1790 with large middlemen and landlords. In Oudh the same classes have been settled with. In the N.-W. Provinces and the Punjab, small peasant . , proprietors who cultivate their own land Peasant proprietors '^ ^ in the N.-W. P. and in whole or in part, and who are collec- tively responsible for the payment of the land revenue, form the bulk of the proprietary class. In most cases the assessment, whether by fields or estates^ is fixed for 20 or 30 years, and is frequently not revised until some years after the term has expired. Throughout Protected or occu- I"dia where the cultivators are not also pancy tenants. the proprietors. Government has, since the Mutiny, been slowly raising the status of a consider- able proportion of the former into that of occupancy 56 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. tenants at fixed rent-rates, consequently the mass of tenants of old-standing, who have brought waste land into cultivation, have now a major share in the largely divided landed interest known as proprietary right. All such tenants can alienate their rights in their holdings under certain equitable conditions. By creating this vast transferable property, we everywhere raised the~credit of the husbandman from a few rupees to thenjarket-value of hi^JiQldingT ' We, in short, admitted him at one bound to all the rights of citizenship — sua si bona norit. He, however, was a conservative, and preferred old ways to new, and ignorance to enlightenment. Naturally he had no objection to spend money, and as the land revenue he paid half-yearly bore no proportion to the crop he had just reaped, he had in bad years to make free use of his credit. The village Bunniah had under former Governments Change in status of been his friend and servant, working in the Bunniah class. harmony with him, and sharing humbly in his prosperity or adversity. As their interests were now conflicting, the ancient alliance between the two was broken. The ev-serv ant- , qpnn asp ired to be mast er, having acquired all the attributesJ2£a-j£w or Greek, plus the right to hold land. Under former Governments, arable land had been practically inalienable except amongst cultivators. The satisfaction of a debt could not be claimed as a right ; its payment was merely a m nra 1 nhl iga tinn With the advent of British rule — British institutions. Effect of" our sys- Civil Courts, Civii rroceoure Codes, tem" on the peasan- Contract, Limitation, Legal Practition- try of India. ers and other Acts were mtroduced, and a bond or a debt secured on the mortgage or condi- tional sale of land became a sacred instrument, to be con- strued according to its terms. A debtor b ecame lia ble to Vn]. AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 57 his cred itor to his last fart hinpf. In the eyes of the law the t wo were eq ual. In sober truth, the peasant was~in money-matters a crass and hardly-intelligible simpleton ; the money-lender, a sharp, unscrupulous business-man, whose sole study was self-interest. With their opposing interests and their widely-different intelligencies, it soon became abundantly evident to those civil officers, whose duties caused them to have much direct intercourse with any of "the people of India," that under the segis of British "justice," that "people" was being reduced into a state of prsedial slavery by a small but ever-increasing class of shop-keepers and money-lenders. It was also clearly foreseen by such officers that in time of political disturbance the new class of proprietors~aiTd"'rn6Vtgagees would be, if not positively a source of weakness to us, in any case without influence in the cause of order. From time to time Local Governments were warned Indifference of high of the popular odium in which agricul- fedi'nt .^UXZ turists regarded our system of civil law,, system" explained. and of the evils to which a persistence in an attitude of watchfulness — alias indifference — would give rise. But in pre-Mutiny days, as now. Governors, High Court Judges, and Chief Secretaries were composed of middle-aged importations from home, and senior mem- bers of the Indian Civil Service who had risen to high positions from scholarly ability rather than from practical knowledge of " the people of India." To such men proposals involving interference with the freedom of contract or class legislation * — that stumbling * In many matters the " class" question is the vital point which deter- mines the shaping of a law. The statute book is full of " class legislation." The very fact that by Section 266 of the Civil Procedure Code the houses of agriculturists are exempt from attachment and sale in execution of a decree, whereas those of non-agriculturists are not exempt, is a pertinent example. Again, certain persons are exempted from personal appearance in a civil court, whilst others are not. H 58 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. block for doctrinaire statesmen — were unpalatable, and though never treated with absolute indifference, were either criticised and shelved till a more convenient season, or disposed of by a no7i possumus, on arguments drawn from first principles. In the Bombay Presidency the growing indebtedness Peasant indebted- of agriculturist to Marwari and other ness m Bombay. foreign traders and usurers, engaged the attention of the Government so far back as 1843. The mode of procedure of those foreigners was described in 1852. The Marw ari is to the De ccan-peasantrv what the Bunni ah is to the Punja bi ^iilti-^^fit^r The procedure followed by the two is identical. What was written in 1852 of the Marwari, might be written to-day of the Bunniah in Punjab villages seldom visited by British officers. The following is the account *: — Generally when a Marwari first comes to the district, he . enters into the service of one of his relations moZs %JraHd7^7( O"" country-men, and when he has saved a Marwari money-len- little money, he sets up a small shop in ders in the Deccan some village, where he thinks he can im- and Bunniahs in the prove his circumstances. At first he is very "J^ meek and forbearing in his transactions with the ryots, and sometimes induces the patels or other in- fluential parties to lend him money to enable him to enlarge his business, and provide for the wants of the villagers. By degrees he extends his operations, until he has got the royts completely into his hands, and by dint of iisury and of any oppressive dealings in which he may be able to obtain aid from the civil court, he collects, say, from Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 4,000, and returns to his country for the purpose of marrying. On his return he plays the same game, other members of his family join him, and with his assistance set up separate shops. In a statesman-like report written in 1852 by Captain, afterwards Sir, G. Wing^ e, Revenue Survey Commissioner, the whole subject was succinctly discussed. As the state » Supeiintendent Revenue Survey's Report, para. 22, No. CXXIII, Bombay Selection. V"]- AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 59 of relationship between creditor and debtor and the causes conducing to enslave the latter to the former, are still — with some ameliorations and exceptions to be noticed hereafter — universally true in India to this day, I shall quote extensively from Captain Wingate's remarkable report. The state of Bom- He begins by remarking that it was bay cultivators in 1852. unnecessary for him — to bring forward proof of the general and deplorable indebted- ness of our agricultural population. The fact is universally admitted. It is familiar to the experience of all public officers, whether Revenue or Judicial. The grinding oppression of the ryot by the village Bunniah or money-lender has become prover- bial, and forms a subject of anxious consideration to all who take an interest in the welfare of the agricultural classes. After referring to a class of apr rarian crim e growing annually more familiar to district officers in the Punjab — that of peasant debtors, when goaded into desperation, mur- dering their creditors — he proceeds : — It re mains to be shown how it is that the creditor in our "Our laws the caus^ Provinces has acquired a degree of power of peasant indebted^ over his debtor, which is wholly unknown in Native States. This power, it is clear to me^ has Been conferred by cmr_laws, which enable the creditor to obtain a decree against a debtor, for whatever may be written in his bond, and an enforcement of that decree by the attachment and galp nf whatpypr property, moveable or immoveableTTus deb- tor may possess or acquire. Under our predecessors — the Mah- rattas — a creditor, it may almost be said, had no legaljneans of enforcing paym ent from his debtor at all. There was, as stated by Mr.' frere in'the 5tfi paragraptTof his report on the adminis- tration of civil justice in Satara, no court of civil justice to which a man who had suffered some wrong could resort as a matter of course and of right. Creditors and debtors were, in fact, left to settle their claims, as best they might, with little or no assistance, in most instances, from public authorities. Even in Satara, where the system of civil justice was considerably influenced by our ideas, it is clear from Messrs. Frere and Coxan's reports that a creditor had very limited means for enforcing his claims. It was no easy matter to obtain a hearing for his case at all ; but Co MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. if he succeeded in securing a decree in his favour, and, what was more difficult still, in obtaining an order for the attachment of the person or property of the debtor, a single attachment was, in ordinary cases, held to be a sufficient satisfaction. It may then be affirmed that, for all practical purposes, the relations between debtor and creditor were determined under the Mahrattas without reference to any -1-egal-means of enforcing payment of dgjjts. The creditor trusted chiefly to the honesty and good faith of his debtor, and it followed, as a matter of neces- sity, that loans were sparingly granted unless upon the security of property, such as jewels left in pawn, or a mortgage on land or houses, or standing crops. In agricultural villages, the rela- tions between the money-lenders and the cultivators were those of mutual interest and confidence. The Bunniah advanced the cultivator as much as he felt satisfied that he could and would pay, but no more, and at no higher rate of interest than was sanctioned by usage and public opinion. If the Bunniah insisted on a higher rate than was deemed equitable, it is not probable that his debtors would have paid up their instalments with the usual regularity, and he had no means of compulsion at com- mand. Under these arranp;empn1-ci, the vi|laf>p mnnpy-lpnflpr and the ryot w orked in_ Jiarmony, and both alike shared prosperity and adversity together. Under our system this happy and mi it,nallv adva ntageous state of affairs has been completely overturned. The prosperity of the ryot is no longer necessary to the prosperity of the village money-lender. The latter has no longer occasion to trust to the good faith or honesty of the former. Mutual confidence and good-wilLJia3re--JiesiL_§iHxeMed.J3y-mutuaLdiitniat-.an4-di§like. The money-lender has the ever-ready expedient of a suit at law to obtain complete command over the person and property of his debtor. It becomes the interest of the former to reduce the latter to a state of hopeless indebtedness in order that he may be able to appropriate the whole fruits of his industry beyond what is indispensable to a mere existence. This he is enabled with- out difficulty to do. So long as a ryot is not much involved, the money-lender is ready to afford him the means of indulging in any extravagance and without troubling him at all about future re-payment. The debt may lie over, and he may choose his own time for re-payment. The simple and thoughtless ryot is easily inveigled into^ the snare, and only be6oiTres-~aware"of his folly when the toils areTairTy'"around him and escape is impossible. From that day forward he becomes the bondsman of his creditor. The latter takes care that he shall seldom do more than reduce the interest of his debt. Do what he will, the poor ryot can never get rid of the principal. He toils that another may rest , and sows that another may reap. Hope deserts, and despair possesses VII]- AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 6 1 him. The virtues of a freeman are supplanted by the vices of a slave. He feels himself to be the victim of injustice, and tries to revenge himself by cheating his oppressors. He cannot get into a worse position than he already occupies, and becomes reckless. His great endeavour is to dispoil his enemies — the money-lenders —by borrowing continually. When he has got all that he can from one, it is a triumph to him if, by any amount of lies and false promises, he can get something more from another. When he has two crfiditoraJkereis a chance_ofjheir fighting vdih each o ther, and that during the fray he may be able to snatch a por- tion of the spoil from both. This miserable struggle between debtor and creditor is tho- roughly debasing to both. The creditor is made by it a grasping hard-hearted oppressor. The debtor, a crouching, false-hearted slave. It is disheartening to contemplate, and yet it would be wpalrnpgc; tn (jnnpp al the fact th at this antagonism of classes and [degradadon_Qi: the people,^ whicHjs^aSt^ spreading over the land, is the work of our laws and our ru le. The corruption and impoverishment of the mass of the people for the enriching of a few has already made lamentable advance in some districts and is in progress in all, and the evil is clearly traceable, in my opinion, to the enormous power which the law places in the hands of the creditor. The facilities which th ^law a ffords for the realization of debt have PypanH^H rrpHit iTTc m^cr ril|??f..l ^^t^..^ In atJdJ. tion to the ordinary village bankers, a set of low usurers is fast springing up, by whom small sums are lent for short periods at enormous rates of interest to the very lowest of the population who have not credit enough to obtain advances from the more respectable of the village bankers. All grades of the people are thus falling under the curse of debt, and should the present course of affairs continue, it must arrive that the gigater part of the realis ed r''"l""'^ ' ' y °^ the co mmunit y will be transferred to a small monied class, which will become disproportionately v(/6althy by the impoverishment of the rest of the people. No greate r mi sfortune could befall any nation than thi s, by -yv EiTcH pampered. And yet this is the inevitable tendency of the exist- ing relations between debtor and creditor in our P^iBsJdency. There is, in my humble opinion, but one^ j^emg jly, and that is to withdrajjujiany of the faciliti es now afforde3 tothe xrediior for the realization ofhis debts, whether just or unjust. To place extortion Deyond"~fhe pale of law, and to prevent the latter being used by a remorseless creditor as an instrument of torture for wringing out of his victims sums of money which the latter had never borrowed, but which their necessities or thoughtlessness had induced them to acknowledge as debts in a bond. What is 62 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. wanted is to restrict c redit ; to make the money-lender more chary of his advances ; to make the people look to their own industry rather than to loans for the purpose of carrying out their projects or gratifying their inclinations ; to afford encourage- ment t o forethought and thri ft, and to throw discouragement in the way ot thoughtlessness and improvidence. If for the words " Marwari" and "ryot," "Bunniah" and " peasant " be substituted,- Captain Wingate might have been writing of facts of the Punjab in 1872 instead of the Deccan in 1852. When inquiries were completed the Bombay Govern- ment, on September 5th, 1855, after re- ment" shelves°^The fcrring to the " almost uniyersal boiidage question of reforms {^^q which the agricultural glasses have fallen from their indebtedness to these foreigners," calmly shelved the question by concluding :^ This is a subject which has been so often brought to the notice of Government, and received so large a share of its anxious consideration on former occasions, that it is unnecessary to discuss it in this place. The proposed introduction of Small Cause Courts will, it is hoped, place some check upon the usurious practice of the Marwaris, and the gradual spread of education will eventually render the ryots less facile vic- tjmsTo' the unfair-practices of these usurer's^over-l'eaching petty capitahsts) than they have hitherto been. But the Executive subordinates of the Government who Local officers re- ^'"'^^ ^™°"g ^^e people would not per- fuse to let it be mit the matter to be dropped so easily. dropped. t o o i -o In 1858 the Revenue Commissioner again returned to the charge. Quoting from the Collector of Ahmednagar, a Mr. Tytlerj__yell known as an earnest and competent officer, he wrote* : — The ryots cannot write or read, and provided they have their urgent wants supplied, be it for a marriage or anything else, they care not what document they sign. The Mar\yaris take advantage of this state of things, and t hey car e nijt.what documenj they forge, or how extravagant the terms entered in * Opinion of the Collector of Ahmednagar, para, i, No. 1636, dated 23rd Jvine, 1858, from Revenue Commissioner, S. D., to Chief Secretary to Government. VII]. AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 6^ the bond. Yet documents thus framed pass as mutual agree- ments between the parties. The aid given bylaw to money- lenders and__borrowers is all on ^e_sid£_aLlIELer foriner ; the latter have no protecHoirwTiialever. They should have all ; the former require none, being well able to take care of themselves. I believe that nine-tenths of the disturbances in India are attributable to this source. * * * * The aid gljjfin_by— aur_courts-aa. all on the side of the Mar wari, wh o alone knows how to turn that aid to his own advantage. The position of the litigants is not therefore simply of debtor and creditor ; it is the fraudulent Marwari, backed by civil courts versus the helpless ryot signing any bond with- out even a true knowledge of its contents, and powerless to oppose any decree that may be passed. This matter keeps up a constant irritating sore through- out the society, and the whole onu s is thrown by the people on the civ il courtSj_ whereas it is the law which is at fault, in as- sumtng debtor and creditor in this country to be equal, while they are rather in the position of master and slave. The question is one of vital importance both to Govern- ment and the people. Even the passive society of the East cannot bear so great a burden without making from time to time convulsive efforts to shake it off. These efforts must increase in frequency and strength, unless the Legislature seriously takes up the evil and applies the knife to it. In illustration of the present working of our usury laws, I shall give one instance which is on record. A man bor- rowed four maunds of j'owari, value about Rs. 6. Two or three bonds followed, and in i6 months the borrower was sued for Rs. 72, which the lender got with costs. The adjudicating authorities considered the thing iniquitous, but there was a bond, and this covers all such iniquity. Thousands of parallel cases could be collected. Every division and almost every village teems with them. This subject has been brought forward repeatedly during the last thirty years, and has always been laid aside in the vain hope that the evil would cure itself, and that the improved condition of the people resulting from the low survey rates would lessen the evil. This hope has not been reahzed. On the contrary, the evil is greatly on the increase, eating into and irritating the entire mass. Again were papers on the subject laid before the- Action again post- Bombay Government, when the follow- pon^'l- ing Resolution was recorded : — His Lordship in Council entertains no doubt of the fact that the labouring classes of the native community sufier 64 -MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. enormous injustice from the want of protection by law from the extortionate practice of money-lenders. He believes that our civil courts have become hateful to the masses of our Indian subjects from being made the instruments of the almost in- credible rapacity of usurious capitalists. N othin g can be rnore__ calculated to give rise to wi despread disc ontent an3"disafiection to the jiriIisli„G£iizeEnmeSt^ thiin- ,th£_^Eactical-_wQrking of the present law. The attention of the Legislative Council on the subject snoul^be requested, and a copy of the Revenue Cominis- sioner's letter forwarded for their consideration. Naturally the Legislative Council, being scholarly The subject sim- '"s" ^"^ only accustomed to study mers for ten years. ^j^e ryots from the windows of palatial offices in Bombay and Poena, let the matter drop. For the next lO years the subject was presumably engaging the " anxious consideration of Government " as it had during Local officers again the preceding twenty. The policy of revive it in 1870. drift-and-do-nothing was continued until, in 1870, the Revenue Commissioner, Northern Division, drew the attention of the sleeping Government "to a very threatening state of matters iji the north and west of the Province * * * * in consequence of the relations brought about by the action of the courts of civil justice between the money-lending classes and superior holders cultivating by means of hired labour, and Bheels and members of other rude tribes who are indebted to the former under various forms of obligation." In the papers submitted, Government was signifi- cantly reminded — "that the Sonthal Rebellion arose out of a state of things precisely similar to that now existing in the west of Khandesh, and that though no indications of an approching outbreak may have presented themselves here, neither did the Sonthals give a word of warning before they burst over the plains of Beer- bhoom with an army 30,000 strong, to avenge themselves on the usurers who had robbed and enslaved them under the tacit sanction of our civil law." That set an inquiry on foot once more ; but though none denied the disease, few agreed upon the remedy. V"3- AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 65 The field of investigation was extended to Sind, the Inquiries into the ^-'W- Provinces, and the Punjab, in all condition of the pea- of which the same deplorable state of santry in Upper India. things was found to exist. In the Pun- jab the acute stage had not yet been reached. AJjealthy peasantry requires more than a decade_of_mistaken_treat- ment to show signs 6f'"serious disease. In Sind — a Condition of Sind country of large landlords — it was found landlords. ^.^at it was " almost equally unhappily circumstanced with the Presidency Proper. A series of unfavourable seasons and calamities has forced the semindars of many districts into the hands of mo- ney-lenders, who exact a very high rate of interest, and with the aid of tlie__courts_ deprive them-of-their lands.- Extrava- gance no doubt has assisted the fall of these Mahomedan gentry : still Government cannot but look with great solicitude on the ruin of the heads of society in a frontier country, con- quered but 31 years ago, who have hitherto been conspicuous for their loyalty and good behaviour. The great Sind jagirdars are also, with but a few exceptions, deeply encumbered with debt." In the N.-W. Provinces inquiries had been progressing Inquiries in the since 1858. The Mutiny had given N.-W. Provinces. dispossessed proprietors an opportunity of destroying the auction-purchasers of their estates and holdings. Regarding those new men and the policy which per- Sir William Muir's mitted them to supplant old proprietors, opinion. Sir W. Muir, in 1859, recorded : — I need not say that my opinion of the injury done by these sales has received grave confirmation from the events of the intervening period. The passi ng of landed estates into the hands of mere speculators without^ a'ny local influence or connexion witirtKe""'soiI7^as" always regarded as a serious disadvantageTHt ouMSa^from their ancestral lands those who by their natural position could best manage them, and be made instrumental in aiding the administration, and it substituted a set of men who were often unable, even in times of peace, to 66 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. t Chap. maintain themselves in secuue possession, and for all administra- tive purposes, were far less responsible and less useful pro- prietors. In addition to this we have now had universal proof that the moment the authority of Government is suspended, the old proprietors will re-assert their foregone rights and oust the upstart intruders. This has been equally the case, I believe, where the sale has been a direct transaction by consent of the former proprietors. It is not therefore an indubitable proof that such sales are re- gardedbythe natives as imjust. It is simply a fresh illustra- tion ot the~lenacity with which mankind all the world over cling to their ancestral acres, and, when the check of authority is removed, a proof of the temptation that exists to resume the alienated birthright. The new owners brought in by our system were generally, as I have said, men without local power or influence ; they could often hold their own position only with difficulty in times of peace ; and when all restraint was gone, they were naturally the first objects of lawless outrage. But whether regarded by the natives to be right or to be wrong, the practical result of these sales has been equally disastrous. They contrib^ed_seriously to the embarrassment of Government, and to the confusion and disorder of the days of anarchy. They proved an eminent source of weakness. This is a fresh argument against the present system, super- added to the evils that were already felt, to call for the adop- tion of all possible means for checking the frequency of sales and permanent transfers. Sir John strachey's Sir John Strachey in the same opinion. yg^r wrote : — Before our Government was established, there was practi- cally no su ch thi ng in the possession of individuals as proprietary rights in land, according to our ideas of what property is7 This is probably true in every primitive state o f society, and it was especially the case in India, Such rights of property as did not appertain to the Sovereign, belonged, as a general rule, rather to a community than to an individual. It is clear that this state of Ihings must pass away with progress in civilisation, and it is no reproach t"o~0'm- bys te m that it has recognised this fact. But the p rinciple has been car ried out too rapidly and too rigidly to its logical conclusions. ''']• AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 67 I have stated my opinion that the origin of the debts which ead to these frequent transfers of property is, in the great najority of cases, the pr essure of our revenue s ystem. Al- hough the main principles of that system are sound, it has, think, been administered in a very harsh and unbending man- ler. Collectors and their subordinates have far too much lecome mere machines for grinding revenue out of the people. 5ut no amelioration or relaxation of our revenue administration nil give any real relief so long as the landholders find it impossi- ile to obtain advances of money on fair and reasonable terms. No one who has not had the matter brought practically ind directly to his notice, can have the least conception of the rna yfry and rapacity of the money-lenders to whom the land- lolders of these Provinces are obliged to have recourse. What- iver ought to be the case in theory, it is very certain that [uestions of abundance or scarcity of money, of greater or less iemand for loans, of good or bad security of competition, and he like, have in practice comparatively little to do with thesettle- nent of the terms on which agriculturists in this country irdinarily obtain advances of money. The conditions depend ar more upon the degree of simplicity in the borrower and of apacity in the lender than on anything else. Our civil courts have unhappily been the ready instruments or these dishonest operations, and our^jiy^tem of judicial proce- lure, instead of ch ecking, h as.atimulated and exaggerated them. No reform of our courts will alone meet this great evil, nd I believe it to be of the highest importance that the Govern- nent should not continue to shut its eyes to the ruin in vhich this widespread system of fraud, or of something little )etter, is involving the proprietors of the land. They are ncapable of protecting themselves, and the Government must nterfere in their behalf, or bear, in the opinion of the people, .11 the discredit of their ruin. There is nothing in the simple ilienation of landed property which is in itself distasteful to he people of this country. I believe that in the great majority if cases, in which the old proprietors during the late disturb- nces resumed possession of their estates, they were enabled do so, not because the people considered that they held an ndefeasible right to the soil, but because the transfer of the ind to a stranger was only the final step in a long course of ishonest proceedings by which the former proprietor had een undeservedly brought to ruin. In the Punjab the question of _ag£icuiterai'-Tnd^t- 68 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. treason for any member of the administration of the model Province to doubt the general prosperity of the agricultural classes, or the perfection of the institutions with whose inception and development the senior civil officers serving in the Commission had identified themselves. The majority of the superior appointments in the Province were then, and still are, held by what are euphemistically termed " military officers," — i.e., men who, after serving a year or two with their regiments, had interest enough to be appointed Assistant Commissioners in the Punjab. A spirit of discip- line and obedience to orders pervaded all ranks. When officers' opinions were called for, they were given without that impressiveness of earnest conviction which charac- terised those of Executive officers in the Bombay Presi- dency. The subject was not treated as immediately grave and urgent, but rather as one which would probably become so in the distant future. The Financial Commissioner of the day asserted bravely that he believed " the people now to have emerged into rigorous manhood," by which hyperbole he probably meant that he thought they were quite capable of taking care of themselves. The Sir Donald Mac- Lieutenant-Governor (the late Sir Leod's opinion. Donald MacLeod), finding " most of the Judges of the Chief Court, the Financial Com missioner, and the High Court of the N.-W, Pxovinx^eSrCippo^ed tp the prohibition of sales of land by law," felt that legislation in that seiiie~was improbable, but recorded his protest against a continuance of the drift policy in the following words : — It is, in His Honor's opinion, beyond a doubt that under no native rule has the forced sale of hereditary land for debts been ever recognised, and it is equally certain, in his opinion, that the principle of selling such lands in exeQutiou— of decrees is, at the present time, entirely abharrent-tn the feelings and opinions of the majority of the people of the Punjab. That VII]- AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 6g it is equally distasteful to the people of the North-Western Pro- vinces, was sufficiently testified, in 1857, by the scenes wit- nessed on the banks of the Eastern Jumna Canal by English refugees from Delhi — villages in flames in all directions, and their auction-purchasers ejected and dispersed, while their women flung themselves into wells to escape dishonour. So far had those responsible for the solution of the Agrarian disturb- niost serious problem created by a res- ances in the Deccan. ponsible Government in the East, pro- gressed in their leisurely inquiry in 1 870-74, when, towards the close of the latter year, some Deccan villagers — grown desperate by 30 years of resultless inquiry, banded them- selves together as a Mahratta Land League and — boy- cotted their creditors. The contagion spread rapidly. In the following May the cultivators in a large village near Poona rose and gutted the shops of their oppressors. Si- milar riots and disturbances took place in a score of other villages, the object in every case being the destruction of bonds and decrees in the hands oTMarwari "and Guzrati money-lenders. The immediately exciting cause — for the risings were believed to be unconnected — was in each case the circulation of a story that usurious bonds had, with the approval of Government, been extorted from a The rising takes ^^^^°''- ^hat the most docile and law- Government by sur- abiding agriculturists in India should prise after 30 years . , . . . _, of "anxious consider- almost Within Site of Poona — the sum- ^''°"" mer capital of the Bombay Government — riotously rebel against the justice of that Government's laws — ungratefully forgetful that for upwards of 30 years their grievances had been subjected to '' anxious consider- ation" — took that Government by surprise. Urged on by apprehension of a general Mahratta uprising, a Commis- sion of Inquiry was immediately appointed, and the excited peasantry pacified by promises of redress of grievances. 70 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. The Commission did its work leisurely but thoroughly. Deccan Ryots Act, Finally, after great opposition, the Dec- 1879, passed. can Ryots Act, 1879,* was passed. So sweeping were the changes made by that measure, that it may be called revolutionary. Besides cheapening and simplifying litigation between peasant and creditor, and compelling the registration of all instruments between Its revolutionary them, it required a civil court in debt provisions. cases, after separating the true principal from the interest, to decree only' reasonable interest and fix instalments for the payment : the period of limitation for debts secured by registration was extended from six to twelve years, and debts on account and on unregistered bond, from three to six years : debts under Rs. 50 could be extinguished at once, the court exacting payment of as much as the debtor was able to pay : agriculturists were exempted from liability to arrest or imprisonment in execution of a decree for money ; and the attachment and sqlf nf i-hpiV lanri unless specifically mor tgaged, was for bidden : in cases of usufructuary mortgage on registered deeds, agriculturists were empowered to redeem on payment by instalments of the ascertained principal with moderate interest superadded : creditors were required, under penalty of fine, to grant written receipts for payments, to render annual statements of account, and even to provide agriculturists with pass- books. This drastic measure has been in force five years over an area 21,523 square miles with a popu- Its working. , . ^ , ^ lation of 32,96,686. It has worked well, restored the cultivator to life and hope, and up to the end of 1884, had enabled more than ten thousand mortgagors to redeem their lost fields. * That is the familiar title, but correctly it is " The Dekkhan Agricultur- ists Relief Act, 1879." It was amended in 1881 and again in 1882. VII]- AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS AND RELIEF ACTS. 7 1 As for the money-lenders, some have gone back to their own country, some have been absorbed into the gene- ral population, and taken to honorable trading, and even to agriculture as the sole occupation, and many of the best class still engage in banking in a legitimate way, only lending to solvent cultivators on good security and on reasonable terms, and have given up land-grabbing as a bad specula- tion. In the report for 1884 of the Special Judge who super- intends the working of the Act, the fact Its satisfactory re- sults after being in that creditors as well as debtors freely force for five years. jj^j^^^^ j^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ specially consti- tuted by the Act, is prominently noticed as confuting the old charge levelled against the Act, that it would scare money-lenders out of the courts. The results of five years' working of the Act are summed up in the following words : — Solvent ryots can borrow as readily as before within the limit of their true means ; but agriculturists Extract from report ^f doubtful solvency find it more difficult ' '^' than of yore to obtain accommodations. Money-lenders are everywhere more chary of lending and more cautious in their procedings. They are learning to contract their dealings within the limits that prudence dictates. Debts of old standing are being rapidly compromised by means of conciliatory agreements ; decrees of the courts and private adjustments, and the work of liquidation, is gradually and steadily progressing ; while comparatively few new liabilities are being contracted ; the result being a v ast di minution in the a ggregate of the ry ots' indebtedness. Meantime~the ryots are becommg more pros- perOTTs and more contented. They continue to regard the Act as the great charter of their rights and liberties. A graria n cr ipie is almost unkn own. The season was, on the whole, a fairly prosperous one. T^o land was thrown up from inability to pay the assessment or other causes. On the contrary, the area under cultivation considerably increased during the year, specially in some talukas of the Sholapur and Ahmednagar districts. Agri- cultural stock has likewise increased. I have not heard of any difificulty having been experienced in the realization of the assess- ment. Nearly all the Subordinate Judges report that the ryots 72 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. are much more thrifty, prudent, and self-helpful. They no longer find it necessary, at every turn, to have resort to the money- lender for loans to buy seed or to pay assessment. They are learning themselves to dispose of their surplus produce to the best advantage, and they take timely measures to provide for the demands that are made upon them. They are also learning to combine for mutual aid with a view of dispensing, as far as may be, with that of the saukars. The general inquiry instituted in 1870 did not alone Sindh Encumbered benefit the Deccan peasantry. In 1876 Estates Act, 1876. ^n Act called " The Sindh Encumbered Estates Act'' was passed for the relief of the indebted landlords of that country. As this volume specially concerns the peasant proprie- tors of the western half of the Punjab, quiry'''^ limit^'' 'to ^"d will contain no proposals for the peasantry of the relief of the few large landlords in Western Punjab. ° those parts, it is unnecessary for me to notice the provisions of the Act, which gave that class in Sindh an opportunity of clearing their estates from debt. For similar reasons the analogous case of the Jhansi land- lords, who were relieved by " The Jhansi Encumbered Estates Act, 1882," requires no comment. I may, however, notice that all such Relief Acts agree in withdrawing suits between money- Relief ActT in mate- lenders and agriculturists from thejuris- nal points. diction of the ordinary civil courts, in compelling creditors to be satisfied with reasonable inter- est, in enabling mortgagees to redeem on easy terms, and in substituting a system of cheap and simple equity, suit- able to the character of the agriculturists concerned, for the expensive and complicated technical justice adminis- tered by the ordinary civil courts of the land. VIII ]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURISTS. 73 CHAPTER VIII. PRESENT CONDITION OT THE MUSALMAN AGRICUL- TURISTS OF THE WESTERN PUNJAB. The Punjab was annexed in 1 849. The Mahomedan . , . tribes occupying its western half were Recapitulation. ,1 then collectively, each within their own domain, owners and cultivators of the soil. No sanction existing to enable a money-lender to hold land, the liigit of an indiyiduaI__cultivator's credit was his willingness to surrender the surplus orX^^good__£ro2Jo. his cceditor. The revenue'system of the Sikh Government was to take in kind as much of each crop as it could safely obtain without causing insurrection or discouraging cultivation. Thus the opportunity presented, in 1849, for introducing the best possible revenue and land laws into a newly- conquered country, was unique. The early administrators of the Punjab had practically a tabula rasa to work upon. Did they, then, with the experience of Bombay, Ben- gal, and the North-Western Provinces before their eyes, do the best possible for the people of the new Province ? We have already seen that they suddenly substituted fixed casti_assessments_jbr_ fluctuating kind payments, and by presenting each individual with the fee^simple of his holding, raiserfTETs crgJit from a few rupees to the market- value of that holding. With a fairly constant yield and prudence on the part of the cultivator, both changes, had they been introduced gradually, might have been productive of excel- lent results. K 74 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. Unfortunately, throughout most of the Punjab south of the Himalayan submontane zone, a crop of any sort is never certain — the heavens themselves forbid it. Unfor- tunately, too, the peasantry are in worldly intelligence as stupid as their own plough-oxen. Thus both measures were fatal gifts ; and when subsequently supplemented by a complicated system of civil law and procedure, which pre- supposes that all men are equally endowedjjdth legal minds, the consequence must be that " the finest peasan- try in India " will shortly be reduced into the position" of serfs to thetf creditors. A glance at their present econo- mic condition is necessary, because the highest adminis- trators, from official optimism and their luxurious remote- ness from rural facts, still believe in the general prosperity of the Punjab agriculturists. The inquiries of 1870 demonstrated that an uneasy feeling existed in the minds of many Indebtedness of . , „ Punjab peasantry experienced Punjab officers that the nown in i 70. indebtedness of the agricultural classes was on the increase. But the absence of reliable statis- tics as to the transfer of rights in land to non-agricultu- rists, want of leisure and fear of a snubbing from the Provincial Despots — the Lieutenant-Governor and the Financial Commissioner — sealed most mouths ; still the im- pression was general amongst those District and Settle- ment Officers who moved about freely amongst the people. Until the end of 1857 the period of limitation for Successive reduc- ^"'^s generally had been 12 years. It tions in limitation was then reduced to six years for claims on bonds and accounts. In November 1859, it was further reduced to three years — what it is now — except in the case of suits based on registered bonds, for which six years remained the limit. Each successive VIII]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSAI.MAN AGRICULTURISTS. 75 diminution of the period brought about a flQo^ji£.]itigation. Increase in litiga- ^^ *^ ^""J^'^ Administration Report tion consequent there- for 1859-60, the enormous increase in the number of civil suits in 1859 is flippantly referred to as " this grand battue of litigation." As the new la ^ forced creditors into the courts exery third year,jvhenever they failed to induce their debtors to renew their bonds with interest and compound interest super- added, the civil courts were soon clogged with arrears, which the institution of Small Cause Courts in large cen- tres could do little to keep down. In 1866 a further and, perhaps, more important change „, __, in the iudi£ial_Jiiste*y--«f--tfer~Pttniab ."f! n'"-°*'^'"''"f"'° — — in judicial history of took place. In that year a Chief Court the Punjab in 1866. . , ,. , , , x , ■ """^ ^ was established at Lahore in superses- sion of a Judicial Commissioner : Act VIII of 1859 — the Civil Procedure ^ Code of the Regulation Provinces— was extended to the Punjab, and pleaders were admitted to practise in the courts. By those means the old rule under which " equity and good conscience" excused all irregulari- Their consequences. ,. r , i_ ^ 1 , ties of procedure, was abrogated, and a reign oftechnical law and of costly and slow litigation inaugurated. In 1866 the number of suits instituted in the Province rose to the hitherto unprecedented figure of 1,65,520, or on e suit to every ninety so uls or eighteen heads of families. This proportion was about three times that in Bengal and the Central Provinces, four times that in Oudh, and nearly five times that in the North- Western Provinces. By iS^O-the number of institutions had increased to 2,05,606, of which 71 per cent, were for Annual increase in 1 n i_ ■ 1 the number of suits " money due," being 19 per cent, more instituted. thanlrT the previous year. In 187 1 the long-suffering agriculturist was further burdened by the 76 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [ Chap. levy of an additional "local rates" cess of 6 per cent, on the land revenue he paid. The number of suits disposed of in that year rose to 2,18,390, of which i,66,6yg were for " money due." The number has since continued to rise year by year, and now stands at the enormous figure of 2,71,375, or 52,985 more than in 1871.* In the Administration Report for the financial year Optimism of the 1 872-73, the Lieutenant-Governor com- Punjab Government. pjacently referred to the peasant pro- prietors of his Province as " thriving and industrious cul- tivators of the soil," and was " not disposed to regard Comparative statement showing increase in liti. gation since 1866. * The following statement exhibits the increase in civil litigation since i886 :^ 1 Number of suits dis- u .5 .^ POSED OF in bn Year. Remarks. !r, « For " |l money Others. Total. is due. o'S z + 1866 392 96,222 70,336 1,66,558 1867 409 90,697 54,980 1,45,677 -20,88 1 1868 405 1,05,506 46,321 i,5',827 + 6,150 1869 434 1,21,597 48,318 1,69,71s + 18,088 1870 433 1,44,958 58,856 2,03,714 + 33.799 1871 442 1,66,679 5', 7" 2,18,390 + 14,676 1872 505 1,68,209 50,134 2,18,343 47 1873 497 1,69,937 53,456 2,23,393 + 5,050 1874 501 1,77,279 57,561 2,34,840 + 11,447' 1875 595 1,73,224 62,123 2,35,347 + 507 1876 596 1,87,895 59.341 2,47,236 + 11,889 1877 490 1,83,421 60,561 2,43,082 - 3,254 1878 (?) 1,91,635 59,221 2,50,856 + 6,874 «879 469 2,08,862 44,225 2,53,087 + 2.231 f The detail of disposals of suits for money due can- 1 880 450 2,13,987 49,890 2,63,877 + 10,790 1881 438 2,12,967 51,324 2,64,291 + 414 not be obtained from the 1882 444 2,09,492 60,281 2,69,773 + 5,482 < provincial reports of these 1883 440 2,13,89s 58,706 2,72,601 + 2,828 years, so the number of institutions has been given 1884 (?) 2,13,297 58,078 2,71,375 - 1,226 Vinstead. VIII]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURTSTS. 77 this comparatively free resort to the courts in petty cases as an unfavourable sign." One ominous sign of the demoralization caused by the Arbitration seldom changes effected in 1866, was early no- resorted to. ti^g^ ^y j^^^y District Officers— litigants ceasing to trust each other, no longer resorted to arbitra- tion for the settlement of their civil disputes.* In 1873-74 the consensus of opinion amongst District Government optim. Officers, on the baneful effect of the sys- ism versus District tem established in 1866, was so strone Officers pessimism. ^^^ ° that the Lieutenant-Governor was con- strained to take notice of it. He remarkedf that most of the officers who thought special measures of relief were necessary to rescue the peasantry from their alleged in- debtedness, presided as Judges in courts sitting in rural tracts, and therefore, owing to their limited means of ob- servation, " took a gloomy view of the financial position of the peasantry." He instanref) spvp c a-L ampnHme nt-s in the law — mostly of an enabling char acter only — which empowered courfs" to "refuse to enforce contracts when " undue influence" had" bee n used, a nd jrno£.ded the exe- cution of a decree directed against_ancestral and jointly- held property in land. Further, after illustrating his argu- ment by some comparative statistics, he came to the conclusion that " the state of the peasantry is in general eminently prosperous." Five years later this opinion was emphatically endorsed by Sir Richard Temple. In his evidence before the Famine Commission m 1879, he stated * Previously a court had power to accept, refuse, or modify an award by A b't ation arbitrators. The new law deprived the courts of that power, and compelled them to " give judgment according to the award." The change in the law, as much as the loss of confi- dence of natives in each other, has operated to make reference to arbitration as a mode of settlement of civil disputes of rare occurrence. t Punjab Administration Report, 1873-74, P^ge 37. 78 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. that " throughout the Punjab the condition of the peasant proprietors" was " eminently creditable to British rule." Returning to the views of the Lieutenant-Governor of Salus populi su- the Punjab in 1873-74, notwithstand- prema lex admitted, j^g ^he official satisfaction with which he received the rising flood of petty litigation, in which agriculturists were chiefly the defendants and Bunniahs the plaintiffs, he frankly admitted that if pessimists could make out their case he would be " prepared to sacrifice, if necessary, a large amount of theory to secure the content- ment of the people." Meanwhile, the number of claims on " money due " went on increasing. In 1874-75, a measure of relief was afforded to the over-worked civil officers of the Pro- Judicial Assistants and Munsiffs ap- vince by the creation of two new kinds pom e . ^ ^£ pyj.g]y _ciyil __courts, which were called Munsiffs and JudicigLAssistants. The change facili- tated the disposal of suits; brought courts nearer to the homes of the people, ensured great er attep ti g n to the technic al provisions of t he law than formerly, and gave Executive officers — Tahsildars and i;istrict Officers* — more time for the exercise of their proper functions. The change was hailed by money-lenders and village .sliop:rkeep- ers as a fur ther cogcesslon, io^ihelc- interests, but was not appreciated by the people at large, amongst whom the feeling of despair, that their interests were being sacrified to those of Bunniahs, found expression in many terse or scornful sayings, the shortest, yet most comprehensive, of which is "p&rhs.^s pothi, gawah, digri, — a bond, a witn ess, a decree, — as descriptive of the three stages' in a civil action and its inevitable result. * A District Officer or Deputy Commissioner in the Punjab is equivalent to the Collector of the N.-W. Provinces, and a Tahsildar to the Deputy Collector. VIII]- PREfSENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURISTS. 79 In his review of the civil administration of his Pro- Increasing number vince in 1 882-83, the Lieutenant-Gover- as a^doubtful^^good ^°^ remarked that " the number.of plea- by Government. ders is annually increasing, and few c ases reach theJi igggF appellate .xoiiJi, without the enter- tainment of advocates, however small the value of the sub- ject-matter." He then went on to observe " whether, in the present state of the Province, it is an unmixed benefit to the people to be able to avail themselves so freely of professional assistance in' the prosecution of their claims, may be matter for consideration.'' There is a ring of helpless regret in the rather impotent conclusion to His Honor's observation. Every officer in the Province knows that " the people," — i. e., the peasantry, hate the interference of pleaders in their cases, and that in suits between Bunniah- creditor and peasant-debtor, and others of a perfectly sim- ple character, such media obscure justice andjruinously enhance the costs of litigation. This lengthy digression is justified if it proves that, after faintly echoing the note of alarm. Digression justified. , . , . „ ^ ^ j ^1 which, in 1873-74, penetrated the sanc- tuary of the Local Government, the attitude of that Govern- ment, with respect to signs and omens of the increasing embarrassment of the people committed to its charge, has since been one of persistent optimism. The position then is, that the Punjab Government holds Official opinion of that the agricultural classes throughout STdTtLT^ofrricuU t^^ Province are in a highly prosperous turists. condition, which, if true, is, as Sir R. Temple says, " eminently creditable to_British rule." As civil officers, whose duties for many years past have made them each — for the districts Differs from expe- . , . , , , ,_.,., rience of its local in which he has served — familiarly ac- ^"^"''^ . quainted with "the people of the 80 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. Punjab," have reason to think otherwise, I shall, as briefly as I can, describe what is the true condition of that people. Adhering to my plan of confining my case to the ^ , . . , Musalman half of the Province, I Conditionof Musalman agricultur- shall only write of the 14 districts ists above examined. ^ r ii n 1 . i- t west of the Jhelum meridian. I may, however, observe that in many tracts east of Jhelum, par- ticularly throughout the south and south-east of the Province, the peasantry are nearly, if not quite as much, involved as they are south of the Salt Range in the west- ern half of the Punjab. Opinion of the Fa- Thg conclusion to which the mine Commission m 1 880, contrary to that Famine Commission came in 1880* of the Punjab Gov- . , .- , ernment. was, m their Own words — We learn from evidence collected from all parts of India that about one-third qf_the land.-hplding.,£lasses„ are deeply and ipextricabTy~~in 3ebt, and that at least an equal proportion are in debt, tFTough not beyond the power of recovering themselves. It is commonly observed that land-l}plders_are^ rnore indebted than tenants with occupancy-rights, and tenants with rights than tenants-at-will, —a result obviously attributable to the fact that the classes which have the best, security to offer are the most eligible customers of the money-lenders. It does not appear that in this respect one Province greatly differs from another, but certain localities are, from special circumstances, either above or below the average condition. Thus, in the Punjab the canal- irrigated tracts are stated to be highly prosperous. A Commission, then, of unbiassed experts, after care- fully considering the best obtainable evidence, gave a verdict directly contrary to that of the Punjab Govern- ment and Sir R. Temple. The officers who know the people best are those who What officers know spend five Or six months in camp every the people best. y^^r, and are left for. several years in one district. Settlement Officers generally serve for six * Para. 4, page 131 a{ Report of the Indian Famine Commission, Part II. VIll]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURISTS. 8 1 or seven years in the same district. If it happens to be a quiet rural district, the chances are, that the officer will knock about in camp for half the year and hold an open levh every day in the week all the year round. Should there be a cantonment in the district, or a popular hill station, the distraction of society and the delights of Himalayan life will probably prove inimical to the acquisition of intimacy with the people. The same causes affect district officers, who are, moreover, generally older men than Settlement Officers, and therefore less inclined for camp life ; and further, they do not, on an average, hold charge of the same district for more than two years. We may presume that such- men will generalise more correct- ly, but have less particular rural knowledge, than Settle- ment Officers. Of the 14 districts of the Western Punjab, five only are quiet rural districts* without cantonments or hill stations. The head-quarters of the other nine have large garrisons, f and two (Rawalpindi and Hazara) have, in addition, popular Himalayan stations within their limits. Of the five ungarrisoned districts, two — Gujrat and The five quiet ru- Shahpur— were settled nearly 20 years ral districts. ^go, in days when cultivators were still comparatively unembarrassed. The other three districts — Montgomery, Muzaffargarh, and Jhang — were settled be- tween 1 868 "and 1880 by Messrs. Purser, O'Brien, and Steedman, and their reports prove that during their six years' lonely exile in their respective districts, they learnt to know the people as thoroughly as it is possible for English gentlemen to become intimate with uneducated * Gujrat, Shahpur, Montgomery, Jhang, and Muzaffargarh. t The strength of the garrisons are, in round numbers, Peshawar valley. Garrison of the 14 8,000 ; Rawalpindi district, 7,000 ; Hazara, 1,800 ; Musalman districts. Jhelum, 1,100 ; Mooltan, 1,400; Kohat, 3,000; Eannu, 2,200; Dera-Ismail-Khan, 2,500 ; Dera-Ghazi-Khan district, 1,500 : in all, about 28,000 men. L 82 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS, [Chap. natives. The three districts lie together south of the Salt Range, in the great arid plain described in the opening chapter of this book. The opinions of the Settlement Officers of those Opinions of their districts, on the condition of the Settlement OfiScers. peasantry in them, may be accepted as absolutely correct. In Montgomery "the revenue and Condition of the ,, , peasantry in Mont- the seed are usually borrowed ; and ^°'"^'^^'' there are few villages that are not seriously in debt." * For Jhang, Mr. Steedman, writing in 1 880, says : — t From 40 to 50 per cent, of owners, and 60 to 70 per cent, of tenants-at-will, are in debt. There are very In Jhang. ^^^ occupancy tenants in this district. I am of opinion that in the case of owners, their average indebtedness is about 25 per cent, of their income, and in the case of tenants, 50 per cent. Ownersl_dehts-«r-e-Has»aUy due to improvident expenditure on marriag^and_iunerals, or to failures of harvests. What keeps the debt from being paid off, is the ruinous rate of interest charged. An ordinary zemindar always, or almost always, lives up to his income. A harvest fails, and he has to borrow money to support himself and pay the revenue. In illustrating how "our SYS t""^ " ^"'-iVhpq Bunniahs and impoverishes peasants, he says : — J When the owner of a good well or a fat piece of saildb § deals with a Bunniah who is anxious to hold some land in * To save space here, I omit very lengthy quotations from reports by Settlement and District Officers on the condition of the people in each of the 14 districts, but give extracts from them in appendix A. t Page 92 of the Gazetteer of the Jhang district. I may note generally that the contents of the district Gazetteers of the Punjab, as far as revenue matters and the economic condition of the people are concerned, are passages taken from settlement reports. The Gazetteers being handier, I generally quote from them. % Page 94 of the Gazetteer of the Jhang district. § Sail&b here means alluvial land subject to river inundation. VIII]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSAI.MAN AGRICULTURISTS. 83 mortgage, he finds that his credit is unlimited. It is a case of spending made easy. He can have whatever he wants when- ever he wishes. All that he is troubled with is his signature or assent to the usual six-monthly statement of accounts, and at harvest time he will make a few payments to the Bunniah in grain. This goes on for four or five years, or often longer. Then the dgmeanpur of thej;reditor changes. He insists upon a re- gistered bond for the amount due or a mortgage. The debtor temporises as long as he can ; perhaps transfers his account to another shop ; often takes his chance of a law-suit, trusting in his luck to evade some of the items. All these devices fail, and he makes over a share in his property on a verbal lekha- mukhi contract to his creditor. This is probably the very worst * thing he could do. A lekha-mulchidar is as hardly displaced as was the old man of the sea. The zemindar never goes into the account, and is fleeced in every possible way. Instead of growing less, the debt grows larger, and a mortgage is at last gained. A lekha-mukhi contract is, I should explain, the first Lekha-mukhimoxt- Step towards ruin, as ""der it the deb tor gages explained. surrenders his crop to .^ thal^Bunniah, who pays all expenses for him, deducts interest due to himself, and finally, is supposed to credit the balance, if any, towards the liquidation of the debt — a consummation sel- dom, if ever, attained. The lekha-mukhi practice is spread- ing slowly throughout the Punjab. It . suits cxg ditersT^nd lulls the debtors in a false secu nty fnr a time. It prac- tically reduces him to the position of a tenant, but as in theory he remains the proprietor, he does not grow alarmed. The transaction, moreover, cannot be shown in the annual statement of transfers of land. Thus, debtor and creditor are both pleased. And yet so perniciou sjs, the system, that under it the peasant proprietors of a whole district might be reduced to serfdom without the fact being shown in the agricultural statistics, on which alone the Local Government must form its opinion. After discussing the extent to which expro ^iiatlon had gone, Mr. Steedman gives his views as to the causes of agricultural- indebtedness. 84 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. and whilst admitting that the revenue system is partly answerable, finds that — * The real and true cause of all our woe was the mistaken Mr. Steedman on ^nd misplac ed gift of full- transferable pro- causes of agricultural prieta ry right in land to the cultivator, and indebtedness. witTi it .of a vast credit, only hmited by the value of that proprietary right. It is only of late that there has been an awakening to the true facts of the case, but the cause stated is the true one. I have not the slightest doubt the thrifty and unembarrassed zemindars of this dis- trict can be counted upon one's fingers. So long as a, zemin- dar has credit, so long willjie- borrow; and so long as he bor- rows, shall we find our annual returns of land transfers slowly but surely and steadily increasing. The sole basis of his cre- dit is his tr ansferable prop erty in ^^p lanrl Take this away, and all the security that the money-lender has is the annual outturn of the crops. In such a case we should not hear of ze- mindars being thousands of rupees in debt. Their credit would shrink, and their debts too. There are numbers of villages along-side the Bar, east of Kot-Esashah, in whirh-therejs-hard- ly a ^ngle ^mortgage. Why ? Becausecultivation is uncertain, and the mortgagee might find the mortgaged land well abandoned in a few months, and himself saddled with the revenue. It is not good enough. Here the zemindars have no credit, and they are not in debt, except to a small amount. You do not find tenants-at-will over head-and-ears in debt. They are in debt it is true, but the limit is the amount that the Bunniah considers is pretty certain to be repaid to him at the next harvest. Condition of the For Muzaffargarh, Mr. O'Brien peasantry in Muzaffar- garh. writes m 1879 : — t No material difterence in welfare exists between tenants with occupancy rights and tenants-at-will in this district. The average area owned by proprietors is five acres. The average area cultivated by tenants is thirteen acres. Both proprie- tors and tenants have an area for grazing, which is prac- tically unlimited. Both proprietors and tenants live in what is literally a hand-to-mouth way. Each harvest barely suffices for the wants of the half year, and is almost always forestalled by borrowing. In regard to their economic state and habits, the agricultural classes naturally group themselves into Mahomedans and Hindus, the Mahomedans being five times * Page 95 of the Gazetteer of Jhang district. + Pages 82-3 of the Gazetteer of Muzaffargarh district. VIIl ]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURISTS. 85 the number of the Hindus. Of the Mahomedan proprietors, 70 per cent, are in debt. Of the Hindu proprietors, 30 per cent, are in debt. It is very difficult to estimate what proportion the average indebtedness of the proprietors bears to the average yearly income. The lowest estimate in the materials before me says, that the amount borrowed yearly is equal to 30 per cent, of the yearly income of the indebted proprietors. The highest estimate gives the debts as 80 per cent, of the yearly income. Of Mahomedan tenants HiS'rantmsted"'' 4° P^'' ^^^^■' ^"^ °'" ^'"'*" tenants 20 per cent, are in debt. The yearly debts of the tenants are equal to 20 per cent, of their yearly income. The cause of the difference between the numbers of the indebted among Mahomedans and Hindus, respectively, is to be found in the diifaE epce of the habits o f each class. M ahomedans are mostlx.sgg£Ldthxi£t~and ^ i mprovident : thje ,.llin.5iJs__ar&.IKe~re- verse. Mahomedans are nearly always uneducated : Hindus are always more or less educated. Hindus usually avoid acts that would bring them within the reach of the criminal law, while Mahomedans supply almost the whole criminal population, and so incur the expenses which follow from being suspected by the police and being prosecuted. Mahomedans have only one source of income, vis., agriculture. Hindus, who own and cultivate land, almost always combine money-lending and trade with agriculture. Hindus acquire land as payment for debts. Mahomedans generally borrow money to buy land. Mr. J. B. Lyall, the lat-p. Finanrial — Commissioner Mr. J. B. Lyall's °^ the Punjab , an ol d and sympathetic opinion. Settlemehf"^ Officer himself, endorsed Mr. O'Brien's opinion in the following words : — * The indebtedness in this district is greater than in any district with which I am acquainted. I append some very true remarks of Mr. Lyall's on the subject, which he made when reviewing the Assessment Report of the Alipur tahsil : — " I quite agree with Mr. O'Brien's remarks as to the indebted- ness of the agriculturists and the faults in their character, which are its main cause. The same faults are attributed generally to the Mahomedan land-holders of all this southern corner of the Punjab, but they are found in this tahsil in a very exaggerated form. The heavy' floods and the fever which follows, have some- thing to do with it. The almost universal prosperity of the Kirar land-holders is a proof that there is nothing crushing in the * Page 85 of the Gazetteer of Muzaffargarh district. 86 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. general pitch of the assessment. But as the Biluches, Syads, and Jats say, it would be folly to expect them to alter their characters and habits, and rival the thrift and frugality of the Kirars. The se Kira rs a re the Jews of the countr y, and have a special natural aputude tor earning and saving money. The general character of the agriculturists must be considered in assessing ; but from what I have seen here and in Mooltan and Dera-Ghazi-Khan, I do not believe that a very light assessment would tend to get them out of debt. In the neighbouring districts of Mooltan and Dera- Condition of pea- Ghazi-Khan, the general condition of santry in Mooltan and the peasantry is perhaps a shade less Dera-Ghazi-Khan. . . unsatisfactory than it is in Muzaffar- garh. Throughout most of Mooltan, 50 per cent, of the proprietors are reported to be in debt, but many only temporarily so, — i. e., with thrift and several good harvests in succession — unlikely coincidences — they could extricate themselves. In Dera-Ghazi-Khan two-thirds of the Ma- homedan land-owners are estimated to be involved, but I think the proportion is exaggerated, as Government has greatly strengthened the position of the Biluch tribal chiefs, and the district policy has always been to uphold their authority in every way, even to discountenancing the acquisition of rights in land by Bunniahs. In Bannu, ^ , _ In the Bannu district which I settled, the peasantry in two tracts are seriously, and many hope- lessly, embarrassed, namely, in Marwat (Trans-Indus) and in the Mianwali up-lands (Cis-Indus). In both I imposed a very light land assessment. But as the average annual rainfall is only about 9 inches, very uncertainly distributed, drought is frequent, and in some years the crops entirely fail. In the Dera-Ismail-Khan district indebtedness is In Dera-Ismail- general. The alienation of rights in ^^^^°- land to non-agriculturists, except in tracts protected by a complicated land tenure and a fluctuating VIIJ ]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURISTS. 87 system of land revenue, has been so seriously on the increase since the -settlement as to have attracted the attention of Government. Commenting on a remark made by the Settlement Officer (Mr. St. George Tucker), that in the Cis-Indus parts of the district many of the small Mahomedan proprietors would eventually have to be sold up, Mr. J. B. Lyall, already mentioned, wrote as follows when Settlement Commissioner : — * All we can do is to amend anything in our revenue system which tends to hurry on the process. Only Despondent view in ^ minority of th£gaJlleJU»a.ve^MMKed fit for the , improved status wh ich we gave the m ; the majority will descend in time into "the position which suits them — of mere tillers of the soil, with enough to live upon, but no credit to pledge, and no property to lose. Their original position under native governments was little better than this. It is, of course, the too frequent elevation of the despised Kirar or Hindu money-lender over the heads of a naturally dominant Mahomedan population, which is the worst part of the change. Whilst admitting Mr. Lyall's sympathy with the struggling agriculturists of the Province and his unrivalled knowledge of their economic condition, I cannot agree with him in holding either that we have done our best to amend our revenue system and assimilate it to the charac- ter of the people who pay the revenue, or of the climate which determines the quantity of each harvest. I draw attention to the wailing helplessness with which he seems to accept the inevitable, that small Mahomedan proprietors, ' though the dominant population, are doomed to sink beneath the superior thrift of the despised Hindu money- lender. When officers in high position, owing to reverence for " our system" and deference to the natural disinclination of Government from what the conservatism of long service regards as retrogressive innovations, throw up the sponge, as Mr. Lyall appears to do here, the chances of * Page 91 of the Gazetteer of Dera-Ismail-Khan district. 88 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. wholesome reform in a vicious system become very improbable. I maintain, however, that we dare not in our own My view disagrees interests, as a handful of foreigners "'"'^ "• governing many millions, subject the dominant to the weaker classes amongst the people. Mr. Lyall would apparently leave things to drift as at present. If his doctrine is endorsed throughout India, it will even- tually lose us India. There remains only one of the eight districts of the Condition of the south-western plain to be noticed— peasantry in Shah- Shahpur. As it was settled in 1 866, the pur. economic condition of the people has not been closely studied, but recent investigation by the district officer proves that " the peasants are generally in debt."* Thus there is a consensus amongst those most com- Summing up of opi- petent to ascertain facts that south of SicuituriSrs^h of the Salt Range most agriculturists are in the Salt Range. debt ; a large proportion, not less than 25 per cent., hopelessly so ; that rights in land are passing from them — except in good years — to the money-lending class, in an annually accelerating ratio ; and that the causes for indebtedness are ascribable partly to characteristics common to all ignorant Mahomedans, but ^hiefly to " our -9ys*e«Jr^ in which the facility it gives for borrowing up to the market-value of a holding, holds a prominent place. Now, turning to the districts north of the Salt Range, „ J... - . we find that in submontane tracts, in Condition of agri- ' culturists north of the which the certainty and sufficiency of the Salt Range is compa- . ^ ,, ratively fairly pros- ramfall generally ensures good crops, P^™"^' those of the people who are not idle drones are at present fairly prosperous. * Page 57 of the Gazetteer of Shahpur district. vni]. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURISTS. 89 The amount and periodicity of the rainfall varies Rule regarding '"versely to the distance from the foot exetjlified."'' '"'' °*" *^ Himalayas on the north and the western limits of the south-east monsoon on the east. South of the Himalayas a zone of from 30 to so miles in width enjoys a fall averaging over 30 inches, distributed with such an exact periodicity that the cultivator is almost as certain of a fair return each harvest as if his lands were irrigated from a perennial canal. Thus throughout a large part of the Gujrat, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, Hazara, and Peshawar districts, when peasant or landlord is seriously involved, the cause is not imputable to the inelasticity of the revenue system. Further south the rainfall gradually diminishes, until from lo inches im- mediately south of the Salt Range, it decreases to six in the southern tracts of Muzaffargarh and Dera-Ghazi-Khan, which occupy the extreme south-east corner of the Punjab, and are therefore farthest from monsoon limits and the Himalayas. In them, too, the fall is badly distributed. Half the year's discharge frequently occurs as a deluge in 48 hours in July or August, and is followed by five or six months of cloudless skies. Considering each district separately and taking the Condition of agri- three— Hazara, Peshawar, and Kohat— culturists in Hazara, which comprise the frontier or Pesha- Peshawar, and Kohat. war division first, we find that in all the three complicated tenures and the turbulent, revengeful spirit of the wild border tribes who hold the land, coupled with the rarity of failure of crop and politic lightness of the revenue assessments, have hitherto restrained all earth-hunger — except in the vicinity of cantonments and towns — on the part of the money-lending classes. None knows better than a Bunniah the localities in which land is not a safe investment. The arm of the law may be M 90 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. long and strong, but where an asylum in independent hills is near, and the village community a brood of reckless Pathans, fear and prudence in combination make the Bun- niah fight shy of the status of mortgagee or proprietor. The levelling effect of the railway now open to Peshawar and the Swat River canal flowing through Yus afzai, will soon encourage the Biuiniah_taxas-t- aside -h-i«.timiditjv-aHd in- vest freely in land throughout the Peshawar valley. No close inquiry into the economic state of the people in any of the districts of the Peshawar division has been made ; but the late Colonel Hastings, C. B., who settled Peshawar, reported that debts were increasing. For the Hazara district Colonel Wace, now Junior Financial Commis- sioner, an officer whose 25 years' service has been devot- ed to land settlements, after six years' observation gave his opinion that though there was " more borrowing than before, there was less real indebtedness." This remark is true for the cultivating classes only. The landed gentry of the district are almost all deeply involved in debt. They deserve no sympathy, their embarrassment being due to their personal extravagance and carelessness. IiTAppen£[ix^,A I give in extenso so me admirable rema rks by Colonel Wace on agricultural indebtednessj ind its causes before and since annexation. For the Kohat district — which is small, poor, halfy«^/r, and merely a maze of stony hills and narrow valleys inhabited by the wildest Pathans on our frontier — no inquiry has been made, but its wildness and poverty probably largely secure to the people the possession of their own lands. Information on the indebtedness of agri- culturists and statistics showing transfers of land to non- agriculturists, are exceptionally imperfect for all the three frontier districts, as indeed they are generally else- where, except in the cases of recent settlements, in which the Settlement Officer has made the subjects a special study. ^"n. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE MUSALMAN AGRICULTURISTS. 9I In the other districts of the northern table-land the In other districts of people are generally believed to be the northern table- ^ ^ land. fairly prosperous. Those who are in- volved are the landlords, who cultivate their lands through tenants, and the peasantry in the outlying southern tracts of the districts in which the rainfall is less in quantity and more uncertain in time of fall than nearer to the Himalayas. _ ^ Two causes, both temporary' in Iwo temporary ^ ■' causes have hitherto their effect, in addition to the all-impor- protected the cultiva- , , . ^ . . , , , • . tors of the northern tantoneof a fair outtum, have combined table-land. ^^ preseve a measure of prosperity to the agriculturists of the Sub-Himalayan zone. No revision of settlement has taken place in Gujrat Old settlements are ^'"'^^ 1 867-68. The assessment then still running or new made was notoriously, even at that are very light. time, unreasonably light. The Jhelum settlement of 1880 is moderate. The revision of the Rawalpindi settlement of 1 86061 is still in progress. But early this year the new demand was announced and the assessment raised, including cesses, by nearly 40 per cent. Thus hitherto throughout the Cis-Indus districts of the northern table-land, the people have been far lighter assessed, considering how blessed they are with a fair prospect of an annual crop, than in the rainless districts south of the Salt Range. This exemption from a full half-assets revenue demand has just ceased for Rawalpindi, and cannot continue much longer in Gujrat. In Jhelum the revised settlement, though light, raised the demand, in 1880, 19 per cent. As there have been no bad years since then, the effect of the increased demand has still to be felt. Work on Northern Then the work on the N.-W. State Rail- State Railway. ^^y, completed in 1882, which runs through the whole width of all the districts of the north- ern table-land, except Hazara and Kohat, for a length of 250 miles, put annually, for several years in succession. 92 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. lakhs and lakhs of rupees into the pockets of the peasants. The Kabul War, too, (1878-80) brought wealth to 'people and Bunniahs alike. The present comparative freedom from serious debt of the peasants north of the Salt Range cannot be taken as a criterion for the future. The sources of profits and savings open to them between 1870 and 1885 are one by one closing. Reviewing all the data available for forming an Result of the whole opinion on the state of indebtedness of inquiry justifies ^jje people in the Western Punjab gloomy views of the r- r- ' Famine Commission, north and south of the Salt Range, we find that the gloomy conclusions of the Famine Com- missioners are amply justified for the eight districts south of the range, including the range itself ; but that throughout the northern table-land — wherever the crops are fairly good and certain — the peasantry are reasonably prosperous, whilst certain classes of landlords, from their own extravagance and inattention to business, are some- what involved. We also find that exceptional causes, now at an end or ceasing to operate, have of late years either enriched the peasantry or helped them to meet all expen- diture from income. We further find that the condition of the agricultural classes, wherever over-population does not exist, corresponds with the certainty of a fair spring har- vest each year, which again depends on the amount and periodicity of the rainfall. Thus the peasantry are generally free frorn serious indebtedness— i«- the -submon- tane zone, more involved as the Salt Range is approached, and~south of it almost universally so. Finally, a close peru- sal of Settlement Reports establishes that wherever in- debtedness does not arise from our revenue system, cli- matic causes or misfortune {e. g., litigation, loss of cattle, or fine), those who are embarrassed, or have alienated a large part of their ancestral lands, are the least laborious and least thrifty classes in the country. I'']- RESTRICTION ON FREE TRADE IN LAND NECESSARY. 93 CHAPTER IX. RESTRICTION ON FREE TRADE IN LAND NECESSARY. Fifteen years ago, when reviewing the Revenue Statistics of land ^^P°'^ °^ ^^^ P""j^b for 1871-72, alienated to money- the Lieutenant-Governor remarked : — lenders still imperfect. ,.,.■.■ "There do not appear to be any statistics available for showing the amount of land which generally, since annexation, or during any particular year, has been sold or mortgaged to money-lenders by zemindars." Some figures having been prepared, the Lieutenant-Governor in the following year "resolved" that they were " indica- tive of remarka ble prosperity and a very moderate land revenue assessment." Since that year first regular settle- ments and the revisions of such settlements earlier made, have been completed or are in progress in 22 * districts, and efforts have been made to obtain reliable statistics as to transfers of rights in land, but with small success ; for, writing on December 24th, 1885, the Lieutenant-Governor, reviewing the Revenue Report for 1884-85, remarked* that such returns were still admittedly defective and uncertain in meaning, f He then proposes • Detail is, first regular settlements completed in seven districts, revisions in eleven, and in four more still in progress. Famine CommUsion's + The available information on the subject was conclusions on alienations Summed up by the Famine Commission at page 126, made to money-lenders. para. 7, Part II of their Report of 1880, as follows : — " In the Punjab the sale of landed property is not decreed by the civil court as an ordinary process for recovering a debt, and is only sanctioned in special cases, where there is no other possible way of satisfying a creditor. The number of such sales has been insignificant. The transfers of land by private sale and mortgage in the three years 1874-77 have concerned 850,000 acres or an eightieth part of the area of the Province. The consideration 94 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. that typical villages should be selected, and the his- tory of . transfers worked out in them, so that by the '■ patient study of particular instances," Government " may be enabled to generalize with confidence on a wider field." Such is the disheartening outcome of 15 years of ,y, ,. perfunctory investigation — except in the quiiy have resulted case of zealous Settlement and Dis- in nothing. - ^ ^,- . 1 , , r r tnct Officers — mto the broad facts of the statistics of land alienations, to say nothing of the minutiae of the remoter causes of agricultural indebtedness. The explanation probably is, that it is in the nature of things that the attitude of most Provincial Governors on the land question of their charges should be one of laisser aller, until the conservative optimism of 30 years of Indian service is roused into spasmodic action by some catastrophe, such as occurred in the Bombay Deccan, in 1875. Were it not so, agriculturists would not have risen ^ , in 1 8; 7, as they did, against their auc- A catastrophe ne- -" ' ■' ' o cessary to rouse Go- tion-purcliase landlords in the Gan- getic Valley. Nor could the Famine Commission, 23 years later, have recorded the discreditable fact that 27 per cent, of the whole land of the N.-W. Pro- vinces~had, by i^f% passed info'tlTe~hahds of thertrading paid has amounted to 145 lakhs of rupees, of which half was contributed by agriculturists and half by non-agriculturists. The amount of land which has passed yearly into the hands of the trading community, has therefore been only one-five-hundredth part of the area of the Province. In the North- Western Provinces the civil courts are not governed by the same rules as obtain in the Punjab, and sales of landed property in execution of decrees are comparatively common ; so that anxiety has at times been felt as lo the extent to which land has changed hands and become the property of traders. In a s pecial in quiry held in 1873, jt_was asf;prtained thnl during ^l^.' prpr-pr|;n;r ^i; years, 17 per cent, of the land had pa ssed from agriculturists to the tradmg clas ses, who then held ''7_C£r ''''"' oT~the w hole! iiut the rate ol transier had much decreased in later years, and it may be added that since then a change has been made in the law of Civil Procedure, under which sales of land have become much less a matter of course than they were." IX]. RESTRICTION ON FREE TRAD.E IN LAND NECESSARY. 95 classes. It is small consolation to know that, owing to later changes in the Code of Civil Procedure, the annual rate of transfer has since been slower. We are drifting in the same way in Lower Burmah, in which the holdings of the peasant cultivators are, I believe, being bought up by money- lenders and speculating capitalists, and no doubt a similar exploitation of Upper Burmah has already begun also. But to return to the case of the Punjab, in which, except in regions of small rainfall, the tis^rs"could7ecoi: evil Of- peasant expropriation is not lected without ex- ygj- trcnerally serious. Assuming, as pense in six months. j o j o the Lieutenant-Governor says, that before legislation it will be wise to ascertain all obtainable particulars as to the causes of the transfers of rights in land and of indebtedness in typical villages, why spend 1 5 or 20 years in considering the matter ? Such informa- tion could be collected in six months for the whole Province at little or no cost. Let a good Settlement Superinten- dent or Extra Assistant Commissioner be sent to each district ; let him go to each selected village, and publicly investigate on the spot the history of each peasant's indebt- edness and alienations of land, and of each money-lender's position, and the thing is done. Here, in the Punjab, all the material facts on the land question onli'hicT'totLI're- are known to every officer in it who form are well-known, j^^g g^^j. ^jixed freely with the people' or even -read the available literature on the subject. J . Formulated as six propositions, Facts are reduced '■ i- r- > into six propositions. those facts are : — l._The gift of full indi vidual nroprietary right— in Gift of property in which term is included the rights of land. occupancy tenants — so extended each man's credit that it enables him to borrow up to the market value of his holding. 96 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. 2. — Punjab agriculturists were, and still are, unfit for Unfitness of pea- such a gift, the vast majority of them santsforsuchagift. bej^g to-day, after 36 years of British rule, almost as rude, ignorant,* and imprudent as they were upon annexation. 3. — In tracts in which the outturn is uncertain the ^. , , rigidity of the land revenue system- Fixed cash assess- . ments a mistake in which demands crop or no crop after each rainless tracts. harvest-time a cash payment equal to about the value of one-sixth of an average yield — together with a vicious but natural propensity on the part of the people to live for the day only, have involved a considerable and annually increasing percentage of them in serious or hopeless indebtedness. 4. — The Acts, Codes, and Rules affecting the relations between ignorant debtors and educated egislatiot!L,^ — Bunniah-creditors, all tend to benefit the latter at the expense of the former. 5. — Making due allowance for the consideration shown Expropriation of to agricultural debtors in the new Civil peasantry by money- lenders. Procedure Code (Act XIV of 1^2), and in the Law of Contract as interpreted in recent Chief Court Circulars and Decisions, the fact remains_that_ agri:: cultural indebtedness is increasing, and that if the acquisi- tion of rights in land by Bunniahs be no t arrested^ agrarian troubles will shortly arise. * A compulsory school cess, amounting to I per cent, on the land revenue Education amongst demand, is levied in the Punjab. West of the Jhelum Musalman peasants. meridian it is chiefly paid by Musalmans, but utilized by Hindus The number of boys in primary schools in the 14 Musalman districts, ranges from I i" 59 of the male population in Jhelum to i in 154 in Montgomery. Most of the boys are only learning to read and write. More than half are Hindus. Of Musalman agriculturists, perhaps one in a hundred can read in an advanced district like Jhelum or Rawalpindi, and one in three hundred in a backward district like Montgomery or Hazara. South of the Salt Range there are hundreds of villages in which not a single Musalman agriculturist can read or sign his own name. '^]- RESTRICTION ON FREE TRADE IN LAND NECESSARY. &^ 6. — No Government, particularly a handful of foreign Its danger for a gov- Sojourners, such as we are, can permit ernment of foreigners, j^e hereditary land-holding classes, who compose "the people of the country," to be subjected to 20,000 or 30,000 money-lenders— all men of no political weight. In the western half of the Punjab, this consideration derives additional force from the fact that the " people " all belong to warlike Mahomedan tribes, and therefore look upon Hindu money-lenders witljf contempt. The above six propositions being accepted, the Direction of re- corollary follows that for the Western ^°™' Punjab, if not for the whole Province, the process jaJLe^ptojaoation must be arrp^^tpd ag soon as possible by wise reforms in our land revenue system for tracts of deficient rainfall, and in our civil law and pro- cedure generally ; and, moreover, the aim of some of the reforms must be to so diminish cred itthat a careless man will only borrow under the compulsion of necessity. Whether 25 or 50 per cent, of the borrowing classes Interesting but im- ^^^ heavily involved ; whether the per- matenal issues. centage of peasant proprietors, in- debted land-lords or occupancy tenants, is the largest ; whether the first serious debt, or the transition from extri- cable to hopeless embarrassment, arose from misfortune, e. g., a bad season, or loss of plough-cattle, or preventible causes, such as unnecessary expenditure ; what ratio the mortgage value of land bears to the selling value ; whether the consideration is generally overstated in sale- deeds in order to defeat the possible claims of pre-emptors, and many other matters, — are all questions, no doubt, in- teresting in themselves, but of no vital importance what- soever as solvents of the great land problem before us. N 98 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. What we have to do is to stop unnecessary borrowing ; to minimise involuntary indebtedness ; Our duty stated. , , ,. to preserve to the hereditary peasant proprietors of the Province the possession of the land and of its fruits ; to simpJif^Jii£Jawuo£-eGatfaGt> and the pro- cpdur e by which, it Js- administered. JlLQur Courts; and, generally, to adapt our system ._of ^'"^'"1 jnstire tn the, means and cap acities of the peasantr y : not to elaborate — as is the tendency — the system so as to make it profitably comprehensible only to the superior intelligence of money- lenders and legal practitioners. With these preliminary remarks I shall proceed to Heads of reforms State and discuss the various reforms classified. which, after long consideration of the subject, commend themselves to me as most practicable and susceptible of easy introduction, without materially affecting any vested rights or shocking any prejudice. The reforms, of which I shall write, may be grouped under the following heads: — (i) Land Tenure; (2) Land Revenue System; (3) Civil Procedure; (4) Specific Miscellaneous Reforms. ^1- RESTRICTIONS ON THE FREE TRANSFER OF LAND. 9? CHAPTER X. RESTRICTIONS ON THE FREE TRANSFER OF LAND. There is at present free trade in land. The claims, if any, of pre-emptors being satisfied, Free trade in land. , ,, , . landlord, peasant-proprietor, occupancy- tenant, and tenant-at-will, may sell or mortgage any or all of their respective rights to whomsoever they please. Conveyanci ng is cheap and expedi tious. If the transfer be in writing, a small stamp duty is charged, and if the consideration is over Rs. loo, registration is compulsory, if under optional. If the parties prefer it the transaction can be carried out by verbal agreement only. In every case when possession is given, what is called a " mutation of n gmesj^ must be effected in the annual village papers through the Tahsildar or his Naib. This operation now takes place where the land is situated, costs nothing, and is completed in a few minutes. Since the last settlements of rights and of land Interests of Bun- revenue in the different districts of the niahs in land. Punjab, Bunniahs have acquired rights in many lakhs of acres as proprietors by purchase as mortga- gees or lekha-mukhidars, * or simply by having, after the Government revenue has been paid, a first claim on the produce as interest-in-kind on a debt due. Some charges of this latter kind have their origin in a practice common amongst poor proprietors and tenants, according to which the cultivator is advanced seed-grain at sowing * For definition of the term, see page 83. lOO MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. £Chap. time, and repays it with interest at harvest, either by the surrender of a share of his crop or of a certain measure of it. No reliable statistics have yet been prepared, showing for each locality what percentage of the cultivated area has been acquired since annexation by men of the trading and money-lending classes. In some localities, such as in parts of Muzaffargarh, Khatri Bunniahs farm as well as lend money, but the number of such men is inappreciably small. Speaking generally, land owners are most miscellane- ous, though still chiefly confined to per- Mixed owners of , , . . , , ., certain rich classes of sons belongmg to agricultural tribes and ^" ■ castes, wherever population is dense, sub-division of land minute, and husbandry, by reason of the application of capital on irrigation or other works for increasing the productive power of the soil, good. Thus, in the rich Bannuchi tappahs (parishes) of the Bannu dis- trict, in parts of the Chhach plain, in the Rawalpindi dis- trict, and in the vicinity of Peshawar city, although the original Pathan proprietary families are still dominant, the buying and selling, mortgaging and bartering^of land in small plots has been for more than a generation so great that aTargg-proportTori " of the cuTtivating owners are of mixed castes. Similarly, in the neighbourhood of towns and large, rich villages, the original owners no longer hold the greater part of the land, — Arains, Khatris, and men of the village, — menial and artisan castes being frequently found as full or part owners and as occupancy tenants. In the case of wells used for irrigation and the culti- „, „ , , vated area attached thereto, Bunniahs Well lands, (Khatrisj are often the sole owners, or hold shares, and where they do so, will sooner or later acquire the whole. Whenever a man of the money- lending class secures an interest in a well, the other share- ^1- RESTRICTIONS ON THE FREE TRANSFER OF LAND. lOI holders, if men of an agricultural caste, feel that their shares will some day be absorbed too. Formerly a peasant wishing to sink a well had to associate a monied man with himself in order to raise the necessary capital, and the well and lands attached thereto were shared between them equally. This is the commonest origin of the adhlapi tenure. Since 1871, Government has encouraged landlords to , „ take advances for agricultural improve- Liberahty of Go- ° ^ vernment in making ments, particularly for well sinking. advances for improve- rr^. . , . , , , ments and relief pur- This wise measure IS now well known. P°^^^- Large sums have, for the last 12 years, been advanced ; * hence the landlord, if not in debt already, has no longer occasion to go to the money-lenders for means to sink a well. With the exception of isolated plots and villages, the above are the only localities in which the representatives of the original proprietary body have succumbed before the superior means and energy of outsiders. The proportion of all such lands in which money-lenders as owners, mortgagees or receivers of rent, have rights, is probably under 30 per cent, of their whole area. It may be laid down as a general proposition that wherever natural advantages have been General proposition. ^^^^^^ over-population has caused the minute sub-divisions of estates, and has consequently so « See Land Improvement Acts XXVI of 187 1 and XIX of 1883 ; also Agriculturists Loan Act XII of 1884 and its predecessor Act X of 1879. In 1871-72 the amount of advances made to agriculturists m the Punjab was nearly a lakh and a quarter, and has since that year been steadily increasmg, and now aggregates over five lakhs in each year. The detail for iS84-»S ^^=- Rs. a. p. Agricultural improvements ... ■•■ 4.Si>8h o a Seed-grain '9.468 o e Bullocks 41.92s o » 5,13,207 o e 102 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Cfiap. Operated as to freely admit outsiders as purchasers and mortgagees ; and further, that in tracts suitable for the profitable working of irrigation wells, until recently the capital of the money-lender was generally required to . „ , help the land-owner to sink a well. A small reform '■ in land tenure re- Giving due weight to the above consi- commended. , . derations, and fully recognising the. necessity of imposing no unnecessary restrictions on the in- vestment of capital in land, whenever such investment will be spent on increasing the productive power of the land, I proceed to st^te th^jrefatoi. JH land tenure which I re- Restriction in free Commend for adoption. / would iHake tradeinlandproposed. n illegal far any person deriving profits from a shop or from money-lending, to acquire any interest in arable or pasture land, other than land in the immediate vicinity of a town or large village, or manured and irrigated land anywhere, or irrigated alone if from a well. To this Two, exceptions to general rule I would add two exceptions, general rule. namely, 1 would permit"~"seea=fFlmr to be advanced, to be repaid at the next harvest only, and I would empower the District Officer to sanction a sale or mortgage in favor of a person of the proscribed class, whenever security was given that capital not less than a sum equal to ten times the annual land revenue of the land, would be invested in improving its productiveness within a reasonable time. Such an alteration in the law, whilst leaving ample Probable effect of incentive for the further investment of Sact;'for'"all capital in land, would effectually stop classes. the further degradation and expropria- tion of the agricultural by the money-lending and shop- keeping classes, except in localities in which property has already so largely chang ed hands that tribal and vill age predominance and cohesion no longer exist. The depre^ia- X]. RESTRICTIONS ON THE FREE TRANSFER OF LAND. IO3 tion of land in areas closed to shop-keepers and money- lenders would be almost inappreciable. Agriculturists would look upon the change as a just and wholesome measure in their interests ; and as to money-lenders, some would concentrate their earth-hunger upon the more and better protected localities still open to them, whilst others would take to agriculture as a sole pursuit. Many of the smaller Marwari money-lenders, whom the Deccan Ryots Act deprived of their occupation, took to agriculture as their sole livelihood. If arguments from outside are required in support Arguments in favor °f some restrictive measure, such as I of proposed reform, ^^ proposing, we have the prar.^jt ^e nf> all native go vernments, ancient and mo dern. No State of fKe present day — unless it be some with institutions re-^ cently remodelled on our own — countenances the acqu isi-j tion of land _b y it"? trgHin r r anH mnnpy-lprjdipg rigggpgl Popular opinion, which is all-powerful in such States, would not permit it. Looking further abroad, I believe I am correct in asserting that the Jews in Russia, and through- out the east of E ur ope generallv,'are ..dJsauarified from holding arable lan d. The peasantry in those countries are ignorant and prejudiced no doubt ; but if they are so, they are as grown men to babes when compared with the peasantry of the Punjab. It will be objected that my proposal, whilst leaving credit unshackled in rich localities, kills Arguments against proposed reform ans- it in poor tracts, where it is most wanted. wcrcd. The answer to such an objection is simple. There is, in the first place, no comparison between the worldly intelligence and wisdom of the cultivators in the areas I would leave open to free competition and reserve for agriculturists alone. The former are generally clever enough to hold their own, whereas the latter are unsophisticated 104 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. yokels who cannot. But besides this, these latter are so utterly improvident that when hard times come they prefer to live on in idleness on money lent, rather than to curtail their expenditure or work as labourers. The best possjjj]£„discipline for such men in hard times is to cons- train them to econ omise and live laboriou 5 day^ by mntrart- ing their borrowing power. When the season of distress is over, State aid can be furnished in the rare cases in which it may be necessary under the Agriculturists Loan Act already referred to. The mone^Jend^rs' apologists, who maintain that at such times the village usurer is a neces- sity, speak nonsense. It is clearly better to compel the Indian peasanrwhen his crops fail to live sparingly, work hard, and, if absolutely necessary, borrow from the State at 6 per cent, interest, than to, as at present, encourage him to eat the bread of idleness, and borrow from an unscrupulous Bunniah at i8 to 36 per cent, interest. There is always plenty of work to be found at remunerative wages for willing hands, if not at home, at a reasonable distance from it. In order to illustrate the possible effect of the altera- tions in the law which I have proposed, Statistics illustra- tive of effect of pro- I have prepared a statement (Appen- posed reform. ^j;^ q_ f^.^^ ^j^j^j^ j^ ^jjj ^^ ^^^^ ^.^^^ in the 14 Musalman districts of the Punjab, 4,544 square miles of the most productive and cultivated land will remain open to the capitalist, whilst the remainder, or 57,248 square miles of inferior productiveness, will be reserved for agri- culturists alone. From an examination of the statement, it will be seen that in each district a reasonable quantity of unreserved area is available for the investments of the capitalist ; and from a personal knowledge of the districts, I may add that that area is generally fairly distributed amongst the different tahsils or sub-collectorates. Thus X ]• RESTRICTIONS ON THE FREE TRANSFER OF LAND. IO5 persons wishing to invest in land will never have to go far afield to find a suitable locality : moreover, if prepared to immediately sink capital on permanent improvement, cal- culated to increase the productive power of the land, unreserved areas will be open to their enterprise. Io6 MUSALMANS AND MON^Y-LENDERS. C Chap. CHAPTER XI. REFORM IN OUR LAND REVENUE SYSTEM IN RAINLESS TRACTS. 2. — Land Revenue System. In Chapter VI of this book, I have shown that one of „. .. , , J the most unfortunate changes introduced Fixity of demand — .a^ - __ a mistake in tracts of upon annexation, was the substitution of fixity for theoretical elasticity of demand in tracts jr" prec arious outturn. For 20 years the system was maintained by successive Lieutenant- Governors and Financial Commissioners, under the mistaken belief that as the assessments were absolutely light when compared with the yield of an average year, their rigidity was teaching prudence to an improvident people. For 20 years the axiom that the profits of good years were, or ought to be, more than a set-off against the losses of bad, was the curt and freezing rebuke invariably ad- ministered by authority to every District Officer who veri- tured to impugn the practice of extorting revenue from needy, cropless peasants. But as settlements became more and more elaborate and inquisitorial in character, the old axiom was discovered to be a paradox. Between 1870 and 1880, the best modes of adapting Discussions o n the land revenue to the variations of the dem^nd'totrout! ^easons were freely discussed, but each '""• was successively damned by what was termed the " fatal objection," that to work any fluctuating system on a large scale, demanded an impossible postulate, viz., a large body of honest native operatives. During the Regular Settlements of most of the districts of the south-western plain — especially Fluctuating assess- ^ ., „, ments introduced in in those of Bannu, Dera-Ismau-Khan, riverain lands. Muzaffargarh, and Mooltan— several 5^1 ]• REFORM IN OUR LAND REVENUE SYSTEM. tOf forms of fluctuating assessments (some of which had never been formally sanctioned) were either quietly recognised, or introduced chiefly for lands in the bed of the Indus and Chenab rivers.* Such lands being subjected to great vic issitu des owing to the uncertain action of the inundations in the flood season and to the changes which then occur in the course of the streams themselves, the absurdity of maintaining a fixed assessment, where one existed, and the inadequacy of the palliatiy es of the one per cent, and ten per cent, rules, -[- where one or other was in force, were self-evident to the Settlement Officer ; hence a fluctuating system of annual assessment on a common-sense basis was introduced. The area so treated is shown at page 113- In 1879 the Government of India, in consequence of the revelations forced upon its notice Inquiries in 1879. r ^ -r-^ t-.-' /- by the report of the Deccan Riots Com- mission, made general inquiries throughout Upper India on the possibility of ameliorating the condition of agricul- turists with due regard to the claims of the State upon them, and advocated the introduction of elasticity of demand wherever the uncertain character of harvests made it desirable. Experts were consulted throughout the Punjab, and a consensus of opinions obtained in fa- vor of some adaptation of the demand to the outturn ; but officers disagreed in details as to system. The result was, what I may term, an abstract resolution from the pen of the then Lieutenant-Governor (Sir Robert Egerton), that theoretically a reversion to kind assessments was ad- visable, but practically impossible, and that no other * The Jhelum river joins the Chenab about 10 miles south of Jhang. The Ravi joins their combined stream some 40 miles further south, and the Sutlej- cum-Biss unites with them some 40 miles south of Mooltan. Natives call the united streams by the name of one rather than by the more correct terms of Trinab or " three waters," and Punjnad or " five streams." t For explanation of terms, see page 112, io8 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-IENDERS. C-Ch^. fluctuating system was feasible. During the inquiry the Settlement Commissioner (Colonel Wace, now Junior Financial Commissioner), stated that throughout the West- ern Punjab a fluctuating system had been, or was being, introduced in all tracts in which it was applicable.* The following statement, prepared from Settlement Tracts of short Reports, Gazetteers, ^nd personal know- rainfall and uncertain ledge, gives the tracts of short rainfall crops. and precarious crops m which a fluctuat- ing system, though applicable, has not yet been intro- duced : — I 2 3 4 5 1 6 7 C AREA IN SQUARE ii.S 2 MILES DEPENDENT Tract. 1 i is ON RAINFALL. -^rV District. -d ^:^l '^% ■a =) ^ .isl 77 6>037 6,114 25,000 Dera-Ghazi-Khan The Pachad 8 .375 1,942 2,317 90,000 Rawalpindi Pindigheb Fattehjang Pind-Dadan-Khan 19 '5 i8 J6os 3.344 3.949 1,94,000 Jhelum - Chakwal Tallaganj 15 "9 f 752 2.576 3,328 2,40,000 Shahpur All but saiiab lands 13 98 3.571 3.669 31,000 Montgomery ... Ditto 9 16 4,015 4.031 5,000 hang Ditto 10 5 4.059 4,064 3,000 Mooltan Ditto Total ... 6 164 4,231 4.395 34.787 52,000 ... 2,562 32,225 7,90,000 * In Appendix D will be found the remarks and recommendations of the Indian Famine Commission (1880), on relative advantages of fixity and elas- ticity of demand, to which I have ventured to add a note of my own, as I do not entirely agree with the Commission, and think that were all the dcz/a now available before them, they would come to the same conclusion as I do in the following pages. ^^i- REFORM IN OUR LAND REVENUE SYSTEM. IO9 The various modes of adapting land revenue col- F d of ob- lections to the seasons, which now taining elasticity of either obtain over selected areas or demand stated. have been recommended as feasible, are the following : — (A). — TAe old native system commonly called kham tahsil or direct management, under which a share of each crop is taken in kind or by appraisement. [E). — A cyclical system under which the full revenue demand would be imposed for a cycle of years, and realised within the period at the discretion of the local land revenue authorities, according to the character of each season's yield. {€). — A portion of the revenue — probably one quarter of a full assessment — to be fixed, and differential crop rates superadded on each season's cultivated area. (Z?). — Fixed village rates or differential crop rates to be levied according to the acreage actually cultivated each season in each village. Of the above systems, the first {A) is theoretically the Direct manage- fairest. It is Still resorted to in the rare "" ^ " ' • cases when proprietors refuse to en- gage, that is, do not accept the fixed assessment imposed at settlement. In most cases the yield is actually mea- sured or appraised, and the Government share is then commuted into cash, and that demand realised from each cultivator. In the Dera-Ismail-Khan district a frontier tribe called Gandapur, occupying a compact block of territory, refused to accept the assessment imposed in 1878, owing to which, and for other reasons, the mainten- ance of " direct management," which had been in force since annexation, was continued. The tract covers 3 1 1 square miles, in some years bears splendid crops, in soms no MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. none at all, and is altogether a country in which a fixed demand would entail great hardships. The demand varies from Rs. 12,000 to Rs. 40,000 each year. I worked the system for three years myself, as well as a somewhat similar one in a tract further to the south, held by a semi-independent Pathan tribe called Usteranahs. In the Gandapur tract, in order to diminish inconvenience, prevent fraud, and partly also as a safeguard against arson, the whole yield was, season by season, collected upon five or six threshing floors, and then divided into heaps, according to the share taken respectively by village menials, tenants, and other cultivators, mortgagees, proprietors, and the State. The latter's share being weighed, was com- muted into cash at a liberal rate. Though personally well disposed to the system, my experience is, that it is burdensome alike to the people — especially to the actual tenant cultivators — and to Government officials, unpo- pular with both, and altogether unsatisfactory. The second (B) or cyclical system was proposed and warmly advocated, between 1870 and Cyclical system. 1 r^ 1 r-\rr- 1875, by several bettlement Officers — myself at first amongst others — and still has supporters. It is, however, quite impracticable. Unless the whole cycle can be administered by the same revenue officers, it would be impossible to fix individual responsibility, on which alone success would depend. As a cycle of the seasons means a period in which — besides good, bad, and indiffer- ent crops, or none at all — at least one bumper yield will be harvested, it follows that seven or eight years would represent the cycle. In such a long term the District Officer (Collector) would probably be changed three times, and the local Tahsildar (Deputy Collector) at least once. Other objections need not be given, as the one already stated is insurmountable. XI ]• REFORM IN OUR LAND REVENUE SYSTEM. Ill The third system (Q, called in vernacular chhar- The compromise '^^ mustakil or " quarter fixed," under ^y^t^""' which a portion of what otherwise would be the annual revenue demand is fixed, and village or crop rates taken, in addition, on the actual acreage cul- tivated each season, was introduced in the Takwara circle, in the Dera-Ismail-Khan district, in 1878, and is still in operation. It was worked by me for three years, and, like all half-measures, is, I think, a failure. The tract in which it was introduced covers 138 square miles, and under the double method in force, yields from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 20,000 in land revenue each year. Each village was fully assessed at settlement in the ordinary way, and one quarter of the demand was treated as fixed, and in addition differential crop rates were imposed on each year's cultivated area. In some villages, which had been unlucky in rainfall or in catching a passing flood from an occasional hill torrent, the fixed fraction in a term of five years actually exceeded the revenue derived in that period from the crop rates. This fact proves that for such a country any fixed revenue, even pitched as low as 300 per cent, below the full assessment, which would otherwise have been taken, was an unreason- able burden upon a poor peasantry. All that can be said for the system is that, as a step towards fluctuation, it is perhaps, on the whole, an improvement on direct manage- ment (^) on a large scale, because it is comparatively easily worked, and does not interfere too much with the operations of husbandry. There remains the last or what I may call the " annual Annual simple rate simple rate System (Z?)," under which system. circle, village, or crop rates are fixed at settlement, and taken each season on the actual acreage then under cultivation. Throughout the riverain tracts of the Punjab, subject to vicissitudes from inundation and rl2 MUSALMANS AND MONEV-LENDERS. [Chat). changes in the channels of rivers, the principle of fixed assess- ments had soon after annexation to be relaxed, and was replaced by two systems known, the one, as the " lO per cent.," and the other, as the " i per cent, rule." The per- centage in each case was that of actual loss or gain from diluvion or alluvion. When more, the Government demand was proportionately reduced or raised ; when less, the revenue-paying proprietors of the village were alone the losers or the gainers. Between 1862 and 1864 the changes in the course of the Indus, in the Bannu district, were so great that the former rule was extended and made appli- cable to the whole area cultivated in each year between the two high banks of the river. Thus, whenever in any vil- lage the loss or gain in cultivated area, however caused, exceeded 10 per cent, village acreage rates were impos- ed over the whole of it. Even this expansion of the old narrow rule fell short of being satisfactory. It was, there- fore, further modified by me in 1871-72, from which year a fixed acreage rate was annually charged on the whole area under the plough in the year. Finally, in 1878, com- plete elasticity was effected by the imposition of a uniform rate on the whole acreage under cultivation for more than two years, and a light rate on newly-broken up land. This rule was so simple, easily worked, popular, and bene- ficial both to Government and cultivators that, with suit- able local modifications, it has since been introduced throughout the riverain alluvial tracts of the Dera-Ismail- Khan district, and of the Muzaffargarh, Mooltan, and Jhang districts as well. I served in the Bannu district from 1867 to 1878, and in the Dera-Ismail-Khan district from 1881 until November 1885. In both districts one of my duties was the supervision of the working of the fluctuating systems of assessment in force in them. I Area over which it have thus long experience in what I °'"""'' have called the "annual simple rate XI]. REFORM IN OUR LAND REVENUE SYSTEM. "3 system." The area over which it now obtains is as follows : — Annual culti- Name of Name of rive 1 vated area in Revenue district. or tract. square miles in 1884-85. Remarks. in 1884-85. Rs. i Bannu Indus & Kur- ram. 118 90,259 •3 1 D.-I.-Khan, Indus & Da- S4S 2,61,287 ■^ man tract. S s Montgomery, Ravi IS 11,165 1^ V ' 3 Jhang Chenab and 12 7.449 B 00 Ravi. ^ He said : — * After a quarter of a century of British adminis- The Punjab law- tration, the state of things was, he thought, ridden and lawyer such as to disappoint persons who were over-ridden. concerned in the administration of the Pro- vince in the early days when he had served there. The plan of administration then pursued had not only been modified, but he might say entirely reversed. The Punjab had come to be as l ^^w-p'iji dpn^ as much ridden over by lawyers, he feared, as any part of British India. He had often expressed in this Coun- cil — perhaps it might have been thought in a somewhat jocular way — his ahhorren(;e for the reign of law yers ; but in doing so, he did not in any respect mean to give that opinion in the way of a joke, but in the most serious and sad manner. He did consider that the predominance of lawyers all over the country * Tupfet's Punjab Customary Law, Vol. I, page 129. Il8 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. was a very serious and growing evil; and he wished to declare his opiniol nhal if e v er L h e eoa -ntry-beeame too hot to hold us, it would be the lawyers that had done it. The Senior Judge of the Punjab, an English lawyer, who had, in comparatively recent years, gone to that Province was, he was told, strongly of opinion that the com^were becoming a burt^enand a .disaster to the people of the Punjab. That being so. His Honor had looked to this Bill, in order to see whether its effect would be to give new force to this l aw-ridden , lawyer-rid den form of administration. — — — - - ■ ,-. With respect to the part played by lawyers in suits in which agriculturists are concerned, I shall have some remarks to make hereafter. For the present, I call attention to the extract from Sir George Campbell's speech, as the sentiments therein enunciated are largely shared by most experienced district officers. Lest it be denied that the Punjab is law-ridden, I may Legislation for the mention here that at the cl ose of 186 6, •^""j^''- five Bengal Regulations and Tj Acts were in force in it, and that since that year to the end of 1882, the average annual outturn from the Legislative Mill of Acts applicable to the Punjab, has been seven. Between the beginning of 1878 and the end of 1882, fifty-two such Acts were passed, being at the rate of a fraction more than ten in each year. Although, however, about 200 Regulations and Acts, and an enormous number of rules framed by the Local Government under them, embody the law administra- tion in the Punjab, acquaintance with 25 or 30 suffices for the ordinary daily requirements of Judicial and Executive Officers. / Out of that number of those dealing with the econo- mic affairs of the every-day lifeof all Examples of over- — — legislation for agri- classes, either the whole or the greater cuiturists. p^j.^. qJ. j.j^g j.^Q marginally named are totally incomprehensible to agriculturists, and only ^" ^' CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. 119 partially so to about 75 per cent, of the Judges who admin- Indian Contrac t ister them and the practising lawyers ^'^^' "^7^- who make their livelihood by misin- terpreting their sections to litigants and Judges alike. The SpecifitSelie£-4*t, provisions of one or other of those two '^77- Acts, as well as those of the complex but, on the whole, us eful " Indian Evidence A ct. 1 872," are constantly referred to, even in petty causes between agricul- turists and money-lenders, by legal practitioners, by weak and timid Judges who seek to relieve themselves of respon- sibility by throwing the onus of an unintelligible decision on the law, and by those stronger Judges who care little for equity, provided they can dispose of a suit quickly, and exhibit legal acumen in their decisions. In the Punjab the costly pja ot i- aetion of li tigation „ ,, , and the generally unsatisfactory con- Revolt of common o j j sense agai nst techni- clusion which the increasing burden cal law. "~ . , _, , • * — of laws and lawyers are causmg,* have induced on the part of Judges of robust independence, who prefer " justice, equity, and good conscience," to techni- calities, an attitude of steady opposition almost amounting to revolt. Such men ride rough-shod over lawyers' qu ib- bles, and decide their cases on the real merits in judgments remarkable for blunt common sense, and the omission of vexatious references to Acts, Sections or Rulings. Should Attitude of the their judgments reach the ChiefXourt Chief Court. on appeal or revision, that Co urt genera l- ly strives to uphold the lo wer Co urt's decision ; but being bound to interpret the Taw as it is, and all freedom of reason being cramped by the arguments of watchful plea- ders, it is often reduced to the necessity of justifying its * See Appendix E, which gives some extracts from a paper by Mr. A. P. Howell, C. 6'. , entitled Legislation in India, in the Calcutta Review of April 1886. 120 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. conclusions on legal grounds. In other words, the clear direction of the law has to be set^ide by,g.p£cial pleading. It is not, however, on every occasion that the Chief Court allows its judgments and instructions to be governed by a healthy sympathy for what is reasonable or desirable. In the case of Barrister-Judges, who have themselves prac- tised at the Bar, the instincts of the old Advocate some- times operate to cause the evolution of subtle distinctions which, becoming rulings, are often productive of far-reach- ing consequences of evil. To illustrate my meaning, I shall give threejostaoces in which the ovejitectuiicaiity and re- Illustrations. fine ment of the law, as now administered by the Chief Court, has caused widespread harm, and tend- ed to _bring the law and Chief Count i n.to-c.Qnte.mpt. I shall then give two instances in illustration of my assertion that, in the interests of the public, the Chief Court readily evades bad provisions of the law by special pleading or otherwise, whenever it possibly can do so. In 1884 a young Mahomedan lady was married to a " The law and the Suitable husband, also a Mahomedan. A lady," or how to get few months afterwards she verted to rid of a husband. . Christianity, and refused to live with her husband. The subordinate courts decreed him what is called " restitution of conjugal rights," but the Chief Court ruled * that as by verting she had de facto apostatised and ^«i3;«'-blasphemed the Prophet, she had therefore ceased to be a wife from the day she had changed her faith. Com- ment on the absurdity of such a decision is hardly needed, especially when it is remembered that ' ffie Prophet licensed the marriages of the faithful with Jews and Christians, and that under the Mahomedan law blas- phemers were put to death by stoning. A second instance * See No. 132, Civil, of the Punjab Record, 1884. '^"^- CIVIL JUStlCE POR AGRICULTURISTS. 121 is the ruling,* in 1879, of the Chief Court, that amongst Sanctity of infant Mahomedans infant marriage is binding marriage : a reduclio adahurdum. until lawful divorce by the husband after attaining majority. Formerly the practice of the Province had been that until consummation the breach of a marriage contract entered into by guardians, entitled the aggrieved party to compensation only, as in case of a breach of betrothal. The practice had for many years given universal satisfaction. Since the new ruling univer- sal discontent and social demoralisation prevail,, and when courts are not strong enough to do right in defiance of the ruling, much confusion in family relationships occurs, as the following case will prove. About 1 5 years ago a male infant was " married " in Dera-Ismail-Khan to a girl some ten or twelve years older than himself When the girl grew up she fell in love, and persuaded the boy's mother — who was his sole surviving guardian and had been a party to the marriage — to give her a divorce. The emancipated girl then married her lover, and had a family by him. In 1883 or 1884 the boy-husband sued for restitution of con- jugal rights, on the ground that the divorce, having been given without his consent, was invalid. The claim was decreed. The boy then charged his legal wife's illegal husband with committing adultery, and sought also to imprison the woman, as she refused to live with him. Both charge and claims were legally sustainable, but the reduc- tio ad absicrdum his persistency had created was so mons- trous that when the case came before me, I laughed the boy out of Court. My individual refusal to enforce the law, notwithstanding the effect of the Chief Court's ruling, is that the woman is her natural husband's mistress, he an adulterer, and their children bastards. » See No. 157, Civil, of the Punjab Record, 1879. 122 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap- "r The third illustration I take from a case which A misconception '^^^^tly occurred at Rawalpindi, in or slip of the pen which the Chief Court, on the revision destroys a montli s , , , . . . , work and costs thou- Side, quashed a decision arrived at after ^''° lengthy and costly proceedings, on the technical ground that as the officer giving the decision had signed himself " Magistrate of the District" instead of " Deputy Commissioner," he had acted u/ira vires. The merits of the case were not touched upon by the Chief Court. The effect of the order has been, so far as the parties are concerned, to cause them a loss of several thousand rupees, to protract the case uselessly for some months, and, quoadthe public, to give lawyers an opportunity for upsetting numerous decisions, otherwise legal, on the quibble that the presiding officer had misdescribed himself, or heard the suit on the revenue instead of on the civil side, or magisterially instead of as an Executive or Political Officer.* And now to show that the Chief .^Court has human sympathies and read ilv evade s. the*pro- Preference of Chief Court for equity when visions of a _bad law for the public P°^^''^'* benefit, when not constrained to interpret it technically by the irresistible logic of watchful counsel. The law of contract introduced by us into India — fol- lowing largely the Roman Law — was, Attachment and ,..,,• , , , sale of judgment-deb- and Still IS, very severe on fhp <^pUny tor's property. y^^^jj ^yy all the debtor's proaertv was liable to attachment and sale. In that year an amended Code of Civil Procedure (Act X) was passed, and amongst other changes a few insignificant necessaries were exempt- * Query. Is an officer, whether Judge or not, bound to describe the official capacity in which he acts, as well as to sign his name? I know of no provision of law which so compels him ; and if so, would not the tacking on to the signature a misdescription of office be mere surplusage ? ^^"^^ CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. 123 ed. From the first a debtor has been.^ with certain restric- tions, liable to a term of imprisonnifint at the instance of the decree-holder_ The courts having no discretionary powers, have been, since 1866, merely instruments in the lat- ter's hands. When, in the execution of a decree, the attach- ment and sale of hereditary or jointly-held arable land was applied for, the Collector was empowered to endeavour to avoid the necessity of public sale, by satisfying the decree- holder by a temporary alienation of the land. Strictly up [to date the law f ^nahlpt; thp Hprrpp -hnldf-r tO arceat-anr< imprison hi s, iudgment-deH ^r, ^"^ gp1l.-tilm-u^ — N-otwfth- standing this, the Chief Court,JiL-X ^77, to e^k— a4va^-age of the sections in the Civil Procedure Code, which authorize the Collector to propose an arrangement by temporary alienations of land, and formulated rules * of such an Obstructive character that since then the public sale of heredita ry and jointly-held land in execution of a decree has almost=fieased. Collectors, sympathising with the agricultural classes, have been in the habit of reading between the lines of the Circular, and have so manipulated it that even when a sale- proposal statement has reached the Chief Court, some loop-hole has generally been given to the Judges for further deferring sanction. Thus the cost, delay, and personal worry to Bunniah-decree-holders have become so intoler- able that proceedings to enforce the sale of land are seldom prosecuted by them to the bitter end. In proof of the fact, it is sufficient to mention that between i88o and Execution sales of 1 884, only 273 such sales— being an IrUri.e'nr^eT ^^crage of 55, or under two for each dom sanctioned. district in the year — were sanctioned. It was impossible that such a state of things could continue * Special rules contained in Judicial Circular No, XXV of Volume of Judicial Circulars, 1879. 124 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. for an indefinite period. Cases occurred in which decree- holders employing counsel insisted on and obtained their rights. The further separation of the Judicial from the Executive Departments effected in 1884, and the persistence of pleaders, have at last constrained the Chief Court to issue a Circular (No. V— 924 of 13th March, 1886), under which, in future, the letter of the law must be obeyed, and civil courts, even though sympathetic with distressed agriculturists, will now have no option but to enforce an execution sale when decree-holders prove obdurate. I now proceed to instance cases in which the Chief Court and Divisional Judges, directly or Sympathy of the . ^ ■ ^1, 1 u 1 -if 1 Chief Court with by connivance, stram thelaw by skiliul agricii ma ce ors. special pleading '"in order to benefit agriowitural debtors. For many years, as I have already remarked, the Exemptions from whole of a debto r's pro ^rty. wasiiable to attachment and sale. attachment and sale- except contingent rights in satisfaction of a decree. Under Section 266 of the new Civil Procedure Code (Act XIV of 1882), his wearr Ung apparel, im plem ents of husban dry, plough and well- bullocks and house are exempted.* The object of the Sec- tion is clearly to leave to the judgment-debtor the means of subsistence. Looking to the spirit rather than to the let- ter of the law in some districts, -f- a practice has been allowed to grow up, under which, in addition to the articles specifi- cally exempted, a portion pjLeach crop, sufficient for the maintenance of the cultivator and his family until the next harvest, has also been treated as not liable to attachment and sale. Neither the Chief Court nor the Government, * I draw attention to this as one instance of class legislation : an artisan's or village-menial's house is not exempted. + 1 believe they are Hazara and the four districts of the Derajat. Rawal- pindi and Gujranwala have recently been added to the list. There are pro- bably others. ^^"3- CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. laj though for over two years officially informed of the extend- ed interpretation put on Section 266 of the Code, has yet interfered with that interpretation's operation ; and what is more curisuvthejaile^wiieraveriQcalLyjatraducedy has been acceiited. by money-lenders with little or no demur. In truth, a study of the Civil Procedure Code of 1882 leaves. the mind in a dilemma. On the. Inconsistencies in the Civil Procedure One hand, it broadly declarSsthat every ° ^' man is liable for his debts, almost to his last asset, and that if he cannot pay them his creditor may arrest, imprisoQtj ^ sell hi m up. On tJje-otKer hand, it, by various enabling Sections, seeks to soften its own harshness. Thus, Sectiori^2iojdeclares that the liquidation of a debt may be decreed " by instalments with or without interest." Thus, too, the sale of land is entrenched behind so many delays, formalities, and incertitudes that, under the vigilant land conservation of the Chief Court and Divisional Judges, it was, until recently, practic ally unattai nable when the decree-holder was a money-lender an d the judgment- debtor an agriculturist. Although the Circular, to which I have already referred,* enjoins the observance of the letter of the law, it may be assumed that both the Judges of the Chief Court and Subordinate English Judges will tacitly combine, as heretofore, to mitig ate the iad asticity of the law whenever possible. If then, as seems likely, certain enabli ng Sections were introduced into the Civil Procedure Code, with a vie w to indire ctly encourage Judges to super- sede the fundamental canon ofthelawofcontract in.j:espect of debt, that a "man is lia ble in person and property to his last asset tor his'just debts, it is only natural that English Judges in India, in their sympathy for impoverished agricul- tural debtors, should endeavour to ignore that canon entirely. » No. V of 1886, 126 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. CChap. Thus we find the Chief Court * enjoining civil courts to look behind the terms of an agreement, Extraordinary doc- i i • i i. j. trine of the presump- and to decree Only reasonable mterest j tion of ignorance. _,vhether the bond was registered or not — in cases in which it may appear that the " agreement has been entered into through fear or ignorance ; " and then we find it gravely ruled that ignorance may be presumed from the bare fact that the borrower is an agriculturist and the lender a village money-lender. % Later still' we find the decreeing of interest on sums decreed persistently deprecated. Thus, in reviewing the administration of the Punjab Power of courts to for 1884-8S, the Lieutenant-Governor setasidean agreement. goes SO far as tO remark: — Steps have been taken to remove an erroneous but too general impression, that when a rate of interest has been fixed by the consent of the parties, the court is bound to decree accordingly. » Judicial Circular No. XXIV of 1879. + See Appendix F, in which part of a judgment by the Allahabad High Court is quoted, together with comments thereon by the Pioneer, in its issue of July 30th, 1886. Some remarks of mine are added, drawing attention to the moral conveyed by the judgment. J Para. 104 of Civil Administration Report, 1883, is as follows : — ' ' The award of interest after decree has been discussed in the section which deals with disposal of suits. A more difficult decrMs. '"'""' '" '"^"^'' '° ^^^'^ ^^''^ '= "'^ ^^^"^ °^ interest in decrees, that is, in the sum substantively decreed. Instruc- tions have been issued for the guidance of Judicial Officers in this matter in Judicial Circular No. XXIV, and in the case noted in the margin it was ruled that the absence of free consent on t he p art of j/d"gSent ^NT'i.o'^'of ^^^^^o..o^^^^j^^:^tmmr^~i,-^n^. S^n 1 14 1579. ot the indianjjidenre Act, from the bare facts of the borrower being a zemindar and the lender a village money-lender. It is to be feared, however, that civil courts are sometimes not as careful as they should be in dealing with claims which are largely, or sometimes even mostly, made up of interest. In cases in which a settlement is come to by the parties under Section 375 of the Civil Procedure Code, the courts are helpless, for they must pass a decree in accordance with the lawful agreement of the parties ; but in other cases the court can exercise its dis- cretion ; and in such cases, even if the claim to interest is not specifically ob- jected to, the court should act in the spirit of the instructions which have been above referred to, and the superior courts should make the most of such opportunities as are afforded them by appeals and inspection of records to see that they do so," '^"3- CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. 12^ Such rulings, instructions, and interpretations effectu- ally encourage sympathetic civil courts, — i. e., most of those presided over by Englishmen, — to treat a large part of the Indian Law of Coniiact_as a deaa~^ette*'-Tfl' cases in vi^hich ap-ririiltiTriql-q arp Hpf ^ndan tg. A little examination will show to what a reductio ad absurdum the doctrine, that ignorance Doctrine of pre- sumption of igno- may be presumed from the bare fact ranee examined. ^^^^ ^^^ borrower is a peasant and the lender a Bunniah, may be brought. This doctrine was evolved in a Circular issued in 1879* in connection with a judgment, which is published in the Punjab Record of that year as No. no (Civil). In that judgment Smyth, J., ruled that, having regard to the fact that the bond was extortionate and unconscion- able («'. e., the interest was high), and considering the rela- tions between the parties {i. e., one obtained his living by cultivation the other by lending money), the Court was justified, in the absence of rebutting proof from plaintiff, in holding that the bond was executed under " undue influ- ence," and was therefore justified in treating the bond as void, and decreeing to plaintiff the amount equitably due — zTeT^he true principal and moderate interest thereon. Plowden, J., held that the bare fact that parties to a con- tract were a village money-lender and zemindar, raised a presumptio juris that there was not free consent, unless that presumption was inconsistent with the other facts disclosed. Now here we have the Chief Court of Justice in the Ruling of Chief Province, not merely adjudicating on Court equitable per- defendant's plea, but going out of its haps, but probably ^ ' o d illegal. way to invent' a plea (?. e., of " undue influence"), of which defendant had never dreamt. There » Judicial Circular No. XXIV. 128 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. is a story of a man, who employed counsel in a case,, that after his counsel's speech he was observed to burst into tears. On being asked the reason, he said ^_^ntil, I heard my counsel to-day, I did n ot know how much wrong I had suiTered." In the case under consideratiori7'a kindly court has assumed the rdle of the counsel in the story. But there is a more important point to be considered, viz., the effects jjf " unduemfluence" on Legal effect of "un- due influence." ^n agreement. For an agreement to be enforceable at law — i. e., cognizable by the courts — it must be made with " free consent" of the parties. Where there is " undue influence" there cannot be free consent. Therefore, when there is " undue influence " theagreement, of which the bond is the outward and _yisible sign, is void. And yet the Chief Court tells us, as per Circular, that " it is beside our duty to set the agreement aside." That is, if we find that an agreement is void, it is beside our duty to set it aside, but we must award the principal mentioned in it and reasonable interest. Again, " c oercion '' stands on precisely the same footing as " undue influence" in the Contract Act. If the courts apply this wonderful new doctrine to cases of coercion, we shall have some ruling like this. A forces B to execute a bond by putting a pistol to his head : it is beside the duty of the court to set the agreement aside ; any principal mentioned in the bond with reasonable interest must be awarded to A. I have said that an agreement brought about by " undue influence" is void, and this seems to be the meaning of ■S mvth, J., when he says " the bond is void." I have en- deavoured to show bya^gument above that such _an_ agree- ment is void. But in S ecfio'tTig, Indian C ontract Act, it is laid down that "when consent to an agreement is caused by 'undue influence,' the contract is voidable at the option of the party whose consent was so caused." If ^^^l- CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. I29 then, at the time the peasant's case came before the Chief Court, the contract was voidable at the defendant's option, and he voided it, he had, under Se ction 6a. Indian Contract Act, only to restore th " v-pn^fifg w]^j^]i V|^ had act ually receive d, consequently he should not have been compelled to pay any interest, but should himself have been entitled to damages under Section 75. So that if the con- tract was voidable, the Chief Court ought only to have dis- missed the case on the bond, leaving the Bunniah to bring another action, if he pleased, for money advanced under an agreement discovered to be void under Section 65, Indian Contract Act. It will be seen that in the Chief Court's judgment the Meaning of igno- Judges do not allude to the ignorance ranee examined. Qf ^jjg zemindar as they do in the Cir- cular. But what does this ignorance mean ? Obviously that the intellect of a peasant is not adequate to allow him to form any reasonable opinion as to how the contract will affect his interests. That is, the courts are to presume that peasants are of unsound mind until the contrary is proved ! What the Indian Legislature did, was to transplant the English Contract "^t TfCuild in EuMJand I J ieean mrdly say people are pre^'thfed to bel^n^ to India with some 30 differences of detail, and require the courts to adminis- ter it. What the Chief C ourt of the Punjab has done, is to instruct the courts to dos.Q-nn -tJ],R .presumption that IPtK 1^ peasants, when dealing ; with Bnn niahni n-ye-tftsan^ Now, leTus glance at the figures exhibitiTlg^e admin- Work done by istration of civil justice in the Punjab munsifs. jn 1884 — the last year for which figures are obtainable. In that year 2,71,375 original suits, being one to every 21 families of five persons, were decided by courts. Europeans only disposed of 4 per cent, of the R 130 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. whole number: 39 per cent, or 1,03,101, were claims for money brought by money-lenders against agriculturists. The 84 munsifs of the Province, before whom most of those claims were heard, disposed of 1,71,651, or over 63 per cent, of the whole number of civil suits decided in the year. Those "munsifs," I must explain, are a peculiar body, only hear what are called " small cause " cases, and compose the agency by which 71 per cent, of the money-claims of all sorts were decided. They are largely recruited from the Bunniah class, and are mostly men of town.£xtraction and of good ed ucation. As a body, they are ignorant of rural affairs, have no sympathy with agriculturists, and do not thoroughly understand their patois. Of su its decided by them, only 28_^ger_ceni,j»'efe-9» on their merits, the remain- ing 72 per cent, being disposed of by compromise, confes- sion, withdrawal, or by dismissal for default. As regards execution of decrees, 31 per cent, were Enormous costliness executed Completely, 25 per cent, par- cutCreaifsSs,rnd tially, and 43 per cent, were wholly in- costs, about equal. fructuous. In Other words, in 67 per cent, of the cases in which the plaintiff won his cause, he ob- tained either little or no satisfaction because the judgment- debtor was insolvent. Put in another form, only28_per cent.«g< ^the money-value of decrees was re alized. Of suits for money or moveable property, 88 per cent, were for sums not exceeding Rs. loo. This class made up 73 per cent, of the whole litigation of the Province. Statutory costs fell at an average of 1 1 per cent, on the suit-valuation ; but such costs barely represent half of the expenses really incurred.* * Statutory costs include the judicial stamp on plaint, process-fees, pleaders' fees at a recognised scale, and diet-money for witnesses, but exclude travelling expenses of parties between home and court, board and lodging at place where court sits, cost of drawing up and writing plaint and numerous petitions and applications, the difierence between percentage on value of suit allowed to pleader and sum actually paid, and a great many miscellaneous incidental expenses besides. 5^'' 3- CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. I3I The ratio of costs progresses inversely to the valu- ation. Thus in suits for Rs. 50 and under, which re- presented 59 per cent, of the whole litigation of the Pro- vince, costs, taxable and untaxable, ranged from about 25 to 60 per cent. The above figures prominently show the enormous costliness of litigation compared with results obtained from it, the petty character of that litigation, the insol vency: r>f a majnrlty nf thp j udgment-d ebtors, and the immense power over agriculturists exercised by mun- sifs. With respect to this class of Civil Judge, it is curious to note how the establishment of a munsif's court in any township or large village immediately creates or stimu- lates litigation, and that the chief function performed by this class of Tudg e is to terrorize defendants into com- ing to terms with their Bunniah-plaintiffs^ Thus, out of 1,71,651 suits decided by munsifs in 1884, in only 48,177, or 28 per cent, were judgments delivered after contest. Duly weighing the above figures and considerations, Should payment of —particularly noting that only Rs. &stf be a'Jrai 35,27,966, or 28,£er.ceQi..aLJie value in obligation only ? money of rl>^f;rpf>g^ ■Hrprp i-ppH'z^^/j on exe- cut ion. _a nd that such a figure represents a sum just roundly equal to the costs and expenses of the litigants and no more, — it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the ex isting system of civil justice, quoad petty causes fo r mo ney or moveables betw een agriculturists a nd Bunniahs, is in a very unsatisfactory ar^d unwholesome state, bein p- too costly, too e laborat e, too technic al, and, above all, in a majority of cases effecting little result beyond the pro- bable impoverishment of one party and the certain ex- asperation and demoralisation of both. I am convinced that were the cognizance of disputes of the above kind 132 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS, [Chap. throughout the tracts in which the agriculturists are still -Jiomogeneous and primitive, priHi-ply w;t-Virlr;mm.Jrnin the "-civil rmijj^q^j2ntx.owing anrl lending .xlasaes wrould agree better togetfi^^nd jh£, general-social tone of both would be im^rgnsdkr—l am only deterred from proposing that the payment of small obligations by agriculturists to Bunniahs, in tracts like Marwat and Bhangikhel, in the Bannu district, and parts of Dera-Ghazi-Khan, and of Jhang and Montgomery, should be a moral obligation, and nothing more, by the conviction of the hopelessness of such a proposal. Now to pass on to the effect of legal practitioners on Pleaders and their litigation. Their increasing numbers "^^^- attracted the attention of the Lieute- nant-Governor in 1883. In reviewing the administration of his Province for 1882-83, ^^ regretfully recorded : — The number of pleaders is annually increasing, and few cases reach the higher appellate court without the entertainment of advocates, however small the value of the subject-matter may be. Whether, in the present state of the Province, it is an unmixed benefit to the people, to be able to avail themselves so freely of professional assistance in the prosecution of their claims, may be matter for consideration. When these words were written, the number of legal practitioners in the Punjab was 149. Since then—?, e., be- tween the beginning of 1883 and end of April, 1886,' tke number has more than doubled, there being on the latter date 396. The annual rate of increase for the future will not be under 50. In the first four months of the current year, no fewer than 49 new pleaders and mukhtars were admit- ted and enrolled. Of the 396 practising in the Province on 1st May last, 308 were men of inferior qualifications bemg pleaders and mukhtars of the second grade. At a XII]. CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. 133 Class. 1 S Annual re- ceipts per head. Total receipts of class. Advocates 1st grade pleaders, 2nd grade pleaders, 1st grade mukhtars, 2nd grade mukhtars. Total ... 21 52 175 IS 133 Rs. 14,000 12,000 6,000 5,000 1,200 Rs. 2,94,000 6,24,000 10,50,000 75,000 1,59,600 396 38,200 22,02,600 low computation* the gross annual earnings of the Bar are about 22 lakhs, almost all of which money comes out of the pockets of litigants. Of practising lawyers, only 2 1 advocates and perhaps half of the pleaders and mukhtars of the first grade, received legal educations. All the others have become lawyers under the stress of circumstances, the large majority being failures in, or having failed to obtain Government service. In a lengthy or intricate case a good pleader is undoubtedly of great assistance both to his client and to the Judge who hears the cause ; but an indifferent one is a nuisance to both. Those inferior practitioners who take up petty cases and appear in munsifs' courts, are generally unscrupulous pretenders, who prey on the igno- rance of their clients. As a rule, a poor man has no wish to engage the services of a pleader or mukhtar unless his opponent first does so, in which case he thinks it necessary to do the same. Petition-writers playing into the hands of their friends or patrons and cutcherry-touts often induce simpletons^ * In a criminal case tried by the District Judge of Rawalpindi . in June, 1886, the prosecution and defence cost complainant and accused over Rs. 8,000. The examination and cross-examination of a native expert cost Rs. 1,200. All this money went into the pockets of several Barrister-pleaders in a trial which lasted about six days. As a rule, pleaders fight shy .of criminal trials. 134 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. and most agriculturists when litigating are simpletons — to engage pleaders, believing that by so doing they must win. I shall refer to this subject again. For the present I draw attention to the annually increasing number of low class legal practitioners in the Punjab, a large proportion of whom are legal impostors, who _U5£e_-oa-~th€ credulity of foolis h litigant s^„anjd.,im.BedS, JCatibar thaniielp,_ justice. To have to enter a court as a principal in a civil case Demoralisation is a real misfortune for a Punjab pea- caused by litigation. g^j^j. j^ jg an education in evil to him. However honest and unsophisticated he may have been when he first approached the contaminating atmosphere of the district cutcherry or munsifs court, by the time the case is over, he has eaten of the tree of knowledge ; he is a fallenjnan. When Tie^ reaches the compound, his bewilder- ed senses are made more confused by the perversions his simple plaint or reply undergp when reduced to writing by a petition-writer, who either personally instructs him what he is to say and how he is to prove it in court, or allows him to be taken possession of by a cutcherry-tout. This class of practitioner does business on his own account by coaching witnesses or explaining " the law " to litigants, or acts as a jackal for inferior pleaders and mukhtars. The peasantry hay£JklLantec£d,ej]t faith in the justice adminis- tered byEngHshrn eh, but no ne at all in that of munsifs, or, in fact, of any nat jrc. Judges. "In rare cases they acquire faith in mdividiial natives, but only after a long experience of them. So convinced are agriculturists that with munsifs law and justice are incompatible, that a large proportion of the exaggerated claims brought by Bunniahs against them are not disputed. Only 28 per cent, of the suits heard by munsifs are contested. Pothi, gawah, digri, represents, as stated once already, the peasant's idea of logical sequence in a munsifs court, — "a bond, a witness, a decree." ^^^l' CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTURISTS. 1 35 Munsifs are not to be blamed for pocketing whatever „. ., consciences they may have, and aiminsr The munsifs are j j ^ o over-worked and un- at quantity rather than quality. Each munsif has one clerk on Rs. 20 a month, and is required to decide 170 civil suits per mensem and 130 execution and miscellaneous cases. The average number of working days in a month is 20 ; * hence a mun- sif has daily to dispose of nine civil suits and five miscel- laneous cases. He has also to keep up 22 registers, and submit numerous returns. Since 1868 the registration of bonds has been optional, ,, , , hence few bonds are now registered. Manufacture of ° false bonds common Their registration used to be a protec- in every is ric . ^.^^ ^^ ^j^^ debtor, but was, in fact, no complete security, as the consideration, though stated in the deed to have been received, was frequently paid — if at all — afterwards. Since the registration of bonds for more than Rs. 5©-Gea,ss(i4©-fe^eesrputeory,Vthj£ manufac- ture of false bojjdshas gradually become a profession. In every district Cis^Tn3urthie''-trade»- iiourishes.„_jIt is a matter of daily occurrence for a frightened peasant to give in petitions to the effect that such and such an one has forged a bond against him. It must not be supposed that Bunniahs enjoy a monopoly of the various means by which * The deductions are usually — 52 Sundays. 17 Mahomedan holidays. Workingdays 21 Hindu ,, in a year. I ( Christian , , 17 Local and conditional holidays. 10 Days for indisposition, casual leave, &c. 128 Thus, 365 — I =2374-12=20 working days in the month. 136 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. IChap. our legal system helps an unscrupulous man to plunder or cheat his neighbours. One caseincourt teaches,a peasant how to mg gt lying w jth l ying- and forgery with forgery. How to procure a false receipt and to assume an air of stolid ignorance, and deny everything, are arts easily acquired. As an instance of the brazen effrontery with which forgery is carried on, I may mention Instance of the way o j in which a false bond a case which occurred in May last at IS prepare . Rawalpindi. An Assistant, just arrived from England, happened to return to office after break- fast, and surprised several natives having an altercation in the verandah of his court-room. Being young and still curious, he had the disputants at once brought into his room, and having taken down their statements, made a report to me, his Deputy Commissioner. I tried the case. It was as follows: — A Bunniah had come up to a petition- writer (fortunately a newly-appointed man) with a peasant, and after a feigned dispute as to terms, the latter executed a bond to the former in a false name. The petition-writer then told the debtor and creditor to bring two witnesses to attest the bond. No professionals being at hand, the Bunniah offered to pay for the writing of the bond, and said he would get it witnessed in the city. To his surprise the petition-writer refused. Recriminations ensued, during which the writer put the bond in his pocket, and the Bunniah attempted to wrest it from him. Just then the Assistant Commissioner came up and recorded the state- ments of the principal actors before time for concocting a story, or arranging a compromise, was given. In the bond an account-debt was referred to. The number of the page in which the account was to be written (for none existed) was left blank. As to the peasant who personated a man whom he did not even know, he had played his XII]- CIVIL JUSTICE FOR AGRICULTORISTS. 137 part for a wage of two rupees. He was a man who had a knowledge of the ways of courts, having been once a party to a case himself. He had come to the cutcherry to make a complaint, and wanting money for the purpose, was a willing tool in the hands of the wily Bunniah. Hundreds of such bonds are annually executed in every district in the Punjab, are attested by hired witnesses, and supported by book entries in the loose accounts village Bunniahs habitually keep. In truth, the whole sketch I have drawn of what ^ ^ . . ., constitutes civil justice in the Punjab, Our system of civil ■' ■' justice for agricultur- is not. edifying. On the one hand, the Legislative Mill is t 'fpfFfj "lit rnmpli - cated Ac te-on English mode ls, which elaborately regulate the simple disputes incidental to rural life, whilst an an- nually increasing host of hungry pleaders is on the watch to manipulate the law to the protraction of justice and their own benefit. Native Judges, perplexed and amazed at the ever-rising flood of Acts, Rules, Rulings, and suits insti- tuted, in fear of the Chief Court's constant exactions in the form of registers, returns, and outturn of work, and of their immediate Appellate Court's caustic criticisms on the quality of that work, sit in despair and shuffle through their daily task perfunctorily like over-worked slaves, On the other hand, we have a body of English Judges, some bluntly common-sensible, others acutely subtle in the law, and both sympathising with the duped simpletons who throng their courts. Those English Judges strive to counteract the evils of too much law, too much litigation, and too many lawyers, by upsetting unjust decisions, cutting down in- terest, reducing costs, and prosecuting suspected forgers and false witnesses. Between the law-practising lawyers, Chief Court, and Divisional and District Judges, the multitude of native s 138 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap courts of first instance fare badly. Their sympathies, ii any, lie with rich suitors. Their one aim is to dispose oj cases with the minimum of personal inconvenience compa- tible with retention of appointment or claim to promotion, And if so, is there reason for surprise that the poor strug- gling cultivator of the soil — that corpus vile on which oui legal experts so light-heartedly experimentalise — is circum- vented by the wily Bunniah ? ^^^^1- REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. I39 CHAPTER XIII. REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. 3. — Civil Law and Procedure. 4. — Specific Miscellaneous Reforms. Civil law reform is such a wide subject that it is impossible in a few pages to do more than suggest a few specific changes, and indicate generally the lines which, in my opinion, should be followed in simplifying procedure, and in securing that the decision of causes shall be on their merits rather than on technical grounds. In an able paper* on the subject, written in 1879, Native views on Colonel Wace, now Junior Financial civil law reforms. Commissioner of the Punjab, fairly repre- sented native views on the shortcomings of our adminis- tration of civil ju sticejn_the jollowing passage : — Native opinion condemns most thoroughly the great power The power the law which our law gives to a creditor over his gives a creditor over debtor, and the blind way inwhich we enforce his debtor condemned rates of interest that are obviously destructive by native opinion. of the debtor's prosperity. Besides the in- stance t referred to at the end of the previous paragraph, an agriculturist is liable to be summoned at the caprice of his credi- tor at all seasons^of the year, — sowing time, harvest time, or any other time. No matter how necessary his presence on his land, the summons is issued, and must be obeyed, under risk of heavy penalties if neglected ; the summons often involving a journey of 20 miles and back, or several such journeys, according to the number of hearings necessary to the decision of the case. Again, when a decree has been passed, it is not the business of the court to provide any reasonable method of satisfaction ; the law allows the creditor to settle that, and the time when he will en- force it, for the most part with sole regard to his own interests. * Settlement Commissioner's No. 1009, dated 5th September, 1879, to Secretary to Government, Punjab. + " For instance, a munsif can attach the whole crop ; and if the cultivator pleads that the law consequently leaves his family without any food for the next month, and also compels him to defraud the State of its share, the munsif can only reply that this is not his concern ; that his duty is confined to administering the civil law." 140 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. And finally, we have instituted a system, of bonds, registration, and balancing of accounts at siiort intervals, which was unknown in the couriti-yiieiore our rule, and the practical result of which is to discharge our Civil Judges from the duty of considering the merits of the debts claimed before them ; and we enforce con- tracts for the payment of interest, which are oppressive to deb- tors, and frequently ruin them, and which lack any sufficient justification as necessary to the prosperity of the creditor. Native tradition and their conceptions of justice, are strongly ,. . , , opposed to all these features in our civil . ,^«fj;"f'">™7°f law. According to their view, civilcaiises judicial action or a . . ° . , , , , . . j j moderating character agamst agn-eultunsts should^ be decided as exercised in the imme- much, as possible in the imm.ediate vicinity diate vicinity of the of tljLe village where the parties reside. In home of the parties. deciding^^^the amolM of SSSiThit is due, the Judge should be bound by no devices of bonds, registration, periodical balances and agreements (in truth, entirely one-sided), to pay extravagant rates of interest, but should ascertain what is really due, and adding a liberal allowance for interest — (their ideas as to what is a fair rate of interest are much more liberal than our own) — forthwith settle between debtor and creditor a reasonable arrangement for the payment of the debt. In so far as such an arrangement may assign to the creditor a share in his crops, native opinion expects that provision shoul d he made first for the p ayment of the rent or rev enue, and that of the balance a fair allowance, not exceeding, nor usually less than a moiety, should be left for the agriculturist's support. The spectacle of the unnecessary and profitless imprisonment of an agriculturist, merely to enforce payment of a debt, is condemned by them as both cruel and wasteful. Obviously, it either incapacitates him for paying, or throws him into worse debt. While the spectacle of the attachment and sale of an agriculturist's crop, without sparing him food wherewith to live or to feed his cattle till the next harvest ripens, is one against which their feelings of justice and mercy alike rebel. The employment of pleaders and barristers in petty agricul- Employment of ^^^^l causes is equally condemned by native pleaders and barris- opinion. The native view is, that the mat- ters in petty agricul- ters at issue are extremely simple, that the XTa™ i^Sn: TP'^r^;:' °' '""'^ '" ^^.^"^y unnecessarily adds to the cost of the htigation,— an addi- tion which, in most instances, the parties can very ill afford, — and that the lower classes of legal practitioners are usually men of bad motives, who foment more htigation than they cure. These assertions are unquestionably true. It is, moreover, also true that for centuries prior to our rule the community have XIII ]. REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. I4I found it practicable to adjust their disputes without the inter- vention of any legal practitioners ; and all the better men among them regard with regret the complication of their dealings with Government by an agency of this nature. Reforms should, I conceive, be directed towards pro- Direction of reform tecting the weak and ignorant many ^'^'^'^- against the more intelligent few who take advantage of their weakness and ignorance. Each dispute therefore should be decided-Qn its real merits on equit4l2ls_gEaujftd«r-a«d when a decree is given against an agriculturist, it should be executed at a time and in a manner which shall least interfere with the debtor's obli- gations to the State and to his family. In both of these respects the Civil Procedure Code fails, because_Jts_ gro^ visions are based on the erroneous assumption that liti^- gants jcnow the faw, tha t Ju dges do their _best_to^ admin- ister itequitably, and that decree-holders execute their' decrees considerately. The facts are the reverse. Rural litigants, whether agricultural or industrial, are ignorant simpletons : civil courts mostly seek only clear files — which compliance with the letter of the law gives at little personal labour — and decree-holders naturally consider nothing but the full and speedy execution of their decrees. The Civil Procedure Code assumes knowledge where none exists, enables Judges to dispose Effect of "may" , ., . . . and "shall" in cer- of from S to lo cases daily in a sitting tain sections. ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^j^ j^^^^.^^ ^^^ deliberately makes th e court the blind instaunent-ef^-the-deefee-J teMer. Thus the permissive " may" in Sections 1 18 and 155 enables courts, when so disposed, to ignore equity ; whilst, on the other hand, the absolute " shall"* of the sections enumer- ated in the foot-note, sometimes compels them to do posi- tive injustice. * Sections 102, 138, 139, 258, 371, 443, 508, 509, 522. 142 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. The law should compel courts to examine the plain- tiff before summoning the defendant, What the I a w *' should compel or per- and On his appearance when summon- mit courts to do. , ^ i • ^i i ■ t, it- ed, to ascertam the real issues by the oral examination of the parties in each other's presence. Further, each case should be decided on its merits: no com- promise or confession of judgment being accepteauntil the court has satisfied itself that both~paFtres understood the consequences of their action, an3"T:hat such action" was fair and reasonable. In debt cases the court should be com- pelled to separate the original principal from the interest — bond or book entries notwithstanding — and to decree only principal and reasonable interest. Then all the elabo- rate procedure which requires a written amendment of the plaint to enable the court to go beyond it, and restricts inquiry and judgment to the actual claim as drawn up by a careless petition-writer, should be swept away, and full latitude be given to the court to decide any case according to "equity, justice, and good conscience." Resort to arbitration should be encouraged by a Power to modify revival of the former authority posses- tion^shouid be"estori ^ed by the courts of modifying an ed to courts. award. As the law stands, arbitration is rendered either impossible or unsatisfactory by the compulsion the court is under Section 522 to decree in accordance with the award.* Moreover, the procedure necessary to validate an award is so elaborate that the whole proceedings are frequently quashed on appeal, because some technicality in the mode of reference or of drawing up of the award was omitted. In its decree the court should be required to state Decrees and their the manner in which, with reference to execution. ^^^ judgment-debtor's status, it recom- mends that the decree be execute d. Moreover, upon * See page 77. '^lin- REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. I43 execution, a larg e latitude sho uld be allowed to the court as to ti me and terms of executio n, and the court should be compelled, when satisfied of the honest inability of the debtor to liquidate his debt and of the improbabi- lity of his circumstances improving within a reasonable time, to recommend his discharge to the District Judge, * who should be authorized to grant it. Further, as to time, the la w should protect agricultu rists from being summoneji_to court _dij.ring the fifteen or twenty days in the _;j^ear when their presence is necessary in the field at the crisis of the reaping operations. The season for sowing is more prolonged, hence no similar protection is necessary during it. As to terms when grain or cattle, or any property the market value of which is liable to great fluctuations from calamity of the season, has been at- tached, the court should be empowered to Cimpose a fair valuati ani _an(^ make the property over to the decree-hol- der at that valuation. As the law stands, such property is auctioned at any time the decree-holder may elect, with the result that it is generally knocked down at less than half its value. I need hardly add that in seasons of drought there is no market for cattle, and that cattle and stored grain are the sole wealth and means of subsist- ence of an agriculturist and his family. 4. — Specific Miscellaneous Reforms. Owing to the bigness of the subject and the necessity of curtailing space, I have so far only Specific reforms. -^^^^^^^^^ the direction in which the amendment of the Civil Procedure Code seems advisable. There are, however, various specific reforms, in favour of » This involves a consideration of the question of an amended Insolvency Law for rural India. Chapter XX, Sections 344" 360 of the Civil Procedure Code, contains the existing law on the subject. I made suggestions m favor of certain changes in the law in 1884, which will be found in Appendix G, together with a note now added, J 44 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. C^hap. which overwhelming arguments can, I think, be condensed into a few lines or a page. I proceed to state them in the following order : — (i). Exemption of all necessaries from attachment and sale in execution of a decree. (2). Exemption from imprisonment for debt of honest insolvents. (3). Extension of the period of limitation. (4). The keeping of accounts in a business-like manner. (5). Extension of compulsory registration of bonds over Rs. 49- (6). Exclusion of legal practitioners from the courts of munsifs and tahsildars. (i). — Exemption of all necessaries from attachment and sale in execution of a decree. In Section 2^ Civil Procedure Code, all property is declared liable to attachment and sale Attachment. . . ^ , . . m execution of a decree except weajong apgarel, tools of artisans, implements of husbandry, neces- sary plough and well-cattle. andTEe- houses of agriculturists. The intention of the Section is to save judgment-deb- tors and their families from starvation by reserving for their use the means by which they gain a livelihood. In the case of agriculturists, the law, as it stands, is a snare and delusion. To leave cultivators their plough cattle, but deprive both of grain and straw requisite to keep them alive unt^l^ the next harvest, is a cruel mockery. In every case a share of the crop, equal to that retained by a tenant- at-will in tracts where competitive rents obtain, should be exempted. In the Kapurthalla State* since 1879, in the case of owners and tenants paying revenue or rent in cash, two-thirds of the grain and one-third of the straw can be * See Appendix H for the detailed rules. ^ii^l- REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. 145 attached in execution of decree, provided that the decree- holder first pays into court the whole of the revenue or rent- charges on the crop. In the case of tenants paying rent in kind, half of the tenant's share of the grain is reserved for his use. If the execution files of any munsif's court be examin- ed, it will be seen with what brutal callousness the stravel- ing bailiff* attaches a cultivator's grain-safe, grain, beds, spinning-wheel, cooking vessels, and other insignificant necessaries not specially excepted by Section 266 of the Code. In a large proportion of the decrees returned as " partially executed," the amounts realised by the sale of the household articles seized is only a few rupees, and barely covers the costs incurred. In the intere sts of j ustice and jnercy, the law requires immediate amendment, so that all the ne cessaries, wi thout which the judgment-debtor cannot ti de over th e next few months, be included in the list of " particulars," which are not liable to attachment and sale.-f- (2). — Exemption from imprisonment for debt of honest insolvents. Under Sections 3 36-3^ of the Civil Procedure Code, Imprisonment for a judgment-debtor may be arrested ^s^'- and imprisoned for a period of six weeks if the debt do not exceed Rs. 50, and for six months if over that sum. The judgment-debtor may apply to be de- clared an insolvent, and on being so declared, is discharged, * He receives Rs. 5 or Rs. 6 a month — less than a coolie's wage — according to the grade he is in. The appointment is much sought after. + Section 79 of the Punjab Land Revenue Bill, now before the Council, extends the exemptions recommended here to the case of a revenue-defaulter. If this Section becomes law, similar exemptions must be conceded to the judgment-debtor. Government has a first claim on the produce for its land revenue. If then the first claimant cannot attach a certain reasonable portion of a crop, inferior claimants must be treated in the same way also. 146 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [ Chap. but his property remains liable to attachment and sale until one-third of his scheduled debts, if they do not exceed Rs. 200, are paid, or until the expiry of 12 years from the date of his discharge. Practically, insolvency is never sought, chiefly because of the severity of the law,* and perhaps also because the procedure being long and trouble- some, the courts seldom apprise judgment-debtors of the provisions of the law. The following table exhibits some particulars regarding the number of persons arrested and imprisoned in the Punjab in execution of decrees during the last five years : — Year. Number arrested. Number imprisoned. Percentage imprisoned to arrested. Remarks. 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 10,772 7,090 9,011 9,691 8,310 990 948 989 1,167 1,033 9 J3 II 12 12 Thus in 89 per cent, of cases the threat of imprisonment im- Iplied by arrest sufficed to con- strain debtor to come to terms with his creditor. Total... 44,874 5.'27 II i, In iTiost civil ized countries the imprisonment of honest de btors is no, longer legal. , Whether similar enfranchise- ment shall be extended only to the N.-W. Provinces or to the whole of India, is now before the Council.-f- The ques- tion will probably be decided before these pages are printed. The great argument against the abolition of imprisonment * See Appendix G. + See " The Debtors Bill" now being circulated. Section 4 (rf) enables a court to imprison a defaulter when satisfied he can pay, but does not. ^'"^' REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. I47 for debt — except in the case of fraudulent debtors — is that without it arrest would lose its terrors. In mountain warfare against undisciplined men shells do little harm. But their " moral effect " is tremendous, because they occasionally commit great havoc. Were it known that the shells never exploded, they would be little feared. Similarly, were it known that arrest would not be followed by imprisonment, the " moral effect " of arrest would be nothing. On the whole, I think, the only change in the existing law of arrest and imprisonment which is necessary is, that im prisonment should only be enforce- able provided th at th e court is satisfied that the debtor' hartE^abiiity to paythe decree, but does no t do so. "~ If not so satished, the court should be required to discharge the debtor. I am aware that Section 21 of the Deccan Ryots Relief Act, 1879, curtly declares '"no agriculturist shall be arrested or imprisoned in execution of a decree for money." After much consideration and consultation with natives of all classes on the effect of such a law in the- Punjab, I deliberately hold that the power to imprison must be retained — safe-guarded in the way I propose — be- cause of its coercive force. To the above extent the question of imprisonment should, I think, be left to the discretion of the court.* (3). — Extension of the period of limitation. At page 74 I have shown how the period has been gradually reduced from 12 years to Limitation. , . , , what it has been smce 1877, w>.,„three ye ars for unsecured debts and six years for debts * The law, as it stands, is brutal. Inspecting the Mansehra tehsil, Hazara district, to-day, I2th August, 1886, I found a miserable looking Mahomedan cultivator in the lock-up— the only occupant. A Hindu creditor had obtained a decree of Rs. 10 against him, and had kept him in solitary imprisonment for over a month, spending Rs. 4-8 in order to satisfy his spite. I released the man, though it was illegal to do so until six weeks' imprisonment had expired. 148 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. secured by registered bonds. The Iiim I'tat'og . Act, _X V oL-iS^fr-rs an instance of over-refinement in legislation — no one without referring to it knows what the period is for more than half-a-dozen descriptions of suit. The periods are graduated with absurd minuteness from days and months to one, two, three, six, twelve, thirty, and sixty years. If the i8o articles of the Act could be reduced to a dozen, both the public and the courts would feel satisfied. Were the period for money claims, se- cured and unsecured, made six years, or even twelve, deb- tors would have a longer term wherein to arrange their liabilities, would not be forced — failing renewal of their bonds — into court every third year as at present, and both lending and — what is of cogent importance — borrow- ing classes would approve of the change. When the Deccan Ryots Relief Bill was before the Council in 1879, the question 01 extending the period of limitation was dis- cussed, and the evidence collected proved " there was a general consensus of native npinrnn thai- tlie_jC£duction of the period operated very prejudicially to the interests of the cultivator." Accordingly, the Act raised the period for agricuTturists to twelve years for debts on registered bonds and six years in other cases (Section 72). Were the law similarly altered for the whole of India, general relief would be felt. The argument that the longer the period the greater the encouragement to improvident borrowing fails because it is open to the creditor to sue whenever he likes within the period. Moreover, as a matter of fact, under the Government which~prece"ded ours, there was no Limitation Law, and yet FecHesFbofrowing w as'~'unkn'own 7'' TTie" same is the case in most Native States to this day. Further allowance must be made for the prudential restraint which contraction of credit will impose on money-lenders and village shop-keepers. ^^^^ ]• REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. 149 Should all necessaries be exempted from attachment and sale, and any or all the other reforms advocated in these pages become law, existing inducements to improvidence will be effectually closed. (4). — The keeping of accounts in a business-like manner. The village Bunniah keeps his accounts in a Hindi character only intelligible to men of his Accounts. , , I own class in his own immediate neigh- bourhood. The accounts are roughly jotted down in booksi or on sheets loosely stitched together. No endeavour is made at close writing, hence interpolation is easy. The very pages are seldom numbered. Correctly each consti- tuent's transactions ought to be recorded in three books, namely, the roznamcha or sur bahi, equivalent to ou r da y- book, in which each day's transactions are recorded in order as they occur ; the khata bahi or l edger , in which each constituent's personal account is similarly entered under his name; and the rokar bahi or ca sh balanc e account, in which the nett results of debits and credits are daily or periodically exhibited. In practice, few petty village traders, until they emerge from that status into the superior position of banker, keep more than the first two account-books, and keep them in such a slovenly way that their correct interpretation, even when translated, is more or less a matter of guess-work. No periodical audit and balancing is attempted. The account runs on from month to month and year to year, interest being added and merged into principal from time to time, and a bond executed whenever the period of limitation draws near. In order to create ^businggs— habits- and protect debtors, traders and ijioney-lenders ^should be required by lawJa.fflaua±ain-alLthe~thKee. a,cGQun.t=,bQ£jks regularly, and the way to effect this would be to declare that accounts I 50 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. ^ Chap. Otherwise kept should not be admitted as evidence of the transaction to which they relate. Unregistered instru- ments, where registration is compulsory, are not admissi- ble as evidence. A fortiori accounts kept in an unbusiness- like manner should not be so either.* The protection of simpletons is equally the duty of the State in both cases. In furtherance of the above objects, cheap forms of blank account-books, with each page consecutively numbered, and the total number of pages stated at the beginning and end of the book, should be prepared by Government agency, and sold by all stamp-vendors and petition-writers at cost price. To attempt anything more than I have here proposed would be a mistake. It would be useless to require re- ceivers to give written receipts for every payment or pass- books to their agricultural constituents, because such a pro- vision of law would not be carried into practice. Chapter IX of the DeccsmKyots Act entitles agriculturists to written receipts for each payment, whether they " demand the same or not," to annual statements of accounts, and to have them made up from time to time in a pass-book. Should the creditors neglect or refuse to do what the law requires of them, they are liable to fine. The law has here demanded too much, and consequently it is a dead letter. (5). — Extension of compulsory registration to bonds over Rs. 49. The law is contained in Act III of 1877. Briefly put, it makes the registration of instruments Registration. affecting immoveable property, worth Rs. 100 and upwards, compulsory, and leaves that of most * In 1858-59 the maintenance of a day-book as well as a ledger was made obligatory in the Punjabj and models of such books were circulated. The scheme was admittedly tentative. — Punjab Report for 1858-59, p. 2. XI III. REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. ISI others optional. Further, it provides that in the former case, when the law has not been complied with, unregistered docu- ments shall not be received as evidence, and that register- ed documents shall take effect against unregistered and, a fortiori, against oral agreements. Notwithstanding the superiority of registered over unregistered documents, the number of the former, in cases in which option is permitted, has been steadily decreasing of late years, so much so that in 1884-85, the last year for which returns have been pub- lished, 11,305 optional documents relating to immoveable property, and only 3,611 concerning money obligations, were registered. Thus, it may be said that bonds for small amou nts a re practically not register ed at all ' In the Pun- jab,— We have seen at page 136 how easily bonds are forged, and the transactions described in them supported by false entries in account-books and other corroborative evidence. I think, and I believe, that most officers of district experi- ence will agree with me that compulsory r^g''^^'''''^''"'''" should be extendedt o all bonds over Rs. 4-Q. an d that re- gistenng oriicers should be compelled to record particulars as to the state of the account between the parties, and of the nature and mode of payment of the consideration. Were the law cr. arpfndpd, hnth t|pp ppnpip nf thp Punjab and our civil courts wo uld experience great relief Such a change would only be a reversion to the~7ule* which obtained in the Punjab from 1859 until the beginning of 1868, when the Registration Act XX of 1866 was extend- ed to it. From that time the registration of all bonds has been, as now, optional. Most registrars content themselves by having the instrument read over before the executants and their wit- aesses, and by receiving an affirmative answer to the stock- * See Judicial Circular No. 29 of 1859 ; also No. 68 of 1S60 ; and foot note at page 15 of Rivaz's Registration Act III of 1877. 152 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [Chap. question whether or not the consideration has been receiv- ed. A short oral examination would frequently disclose that the bond either does not contain a true recital of the transaction therein described, or omits the mention of im- portant particulars, — e. g., the fact that the consideration or part of it has not yet been paid, or that a separate account is still running on. The necessity of better protecting agriculturists by the extension of compulsory registration is recognised in the Deccan Ryots Act, Chapter VIII of which provides for the appomtment ot village registrars — analogous to our Punjab non-official registrars — declares that instruments executed by agriculturists shall not be deemed valid unless executed before such an officer, and requires that the amount and nature of the consideration shall be fully stated and attested. (6). — Exclusion of legal practitioners from the courts of munsifs and tahsildars. I have described the effect of legal practitioners on Pleaders. "^^^'^ J"^*''^^ ^* pagS-l^^-aUiiis volume. Munsifs and tahsildars dispose of 75 per cent, of the petty civil and revenue-judicial cases in which natives, whether agriculturists or not, are concern- ed. The parties are generally one or both poor, and their disputes of such a simple nature that in most cases the ar- bitration of an honest local, when procurable and willing to act, would settle them. better than a court of law. The employment of outside lawyers by one or both parties only doubles costs and prolongs litigation. Even if, as is certain, increasing competition will gradually raise the qualifications of lawyers who take up cases in the courts of munsifs and tahsildars, the practical effect would be an increase in the evibJijsLnpticed. Superior qualifications would require higher remuneration, and would multiply XIII]. REFORMS IN CIVIL LAW AND PROCEDURE. I 53 pleas on points of law. I believe I am correct in asserting that there is a concensus of opinion amongst English administrators of all grad es, which native feeling loudly end orses, that the unlimited license of practice perm itted by law to pleaders and mukhtars, stimulates reck less litJ jTation, demoralises litigants, ruins families, and — in whic h lies the pity of it — doe s no go od. It is no argu- ment to urge that litigants would not employ pleaders were they not useful. Ignorant natives must be protected against the consequences of their own ignorance. What the attractions of the gambling tables of Monte Carlo are to weak-minded visitors, the plausible promises of pleaders are to weaker-minded natives. The chances of success alluringly unfolded is a bait which ruins both. The fE aropean gambler, howev er, knows what the chances are, the Indian litigant does not. U APPENDIX A. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE PEASANTRY IN THE EIGHT- DISTRICTS OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PLAIN. I. — Shahpur District. The Shahpur district was settled many years ago. A revision will shortly be begun. During the last i6 years^, several inundation canals have been dug from the Jhelum with good results. The railway line is now open to Bhera,, and is being extended. Statistics upon agricultural in- debtedness, and the alienation of land to non-agriculturists,, are very imperfect. I know the district, and believe that the District Officer's conclusion given below is correct : — There are no large bankers in the district, but every vil- lage has its petty money-lender, generally General^^ mdebted- ^j. ^j^^ Khatri caste, to whom the people are nessrepore in 79. largely indebted. The Deputy Commissioner reports that " the peasantry are generally in debt. This is due partly to a succession of several seasons of drought, but chiefly to fhe very improvident and extravagant habits of the agricultural classes in respect of marriage expenses, useless establishment of retainers, dress, and the like. It is also due partly to the high interest obtained by money-lenders for loans, for which the rate without security is often as high as Rs. 6-4 per cent, per men- sem, or Rs. 75-12 per annum. On mortgages the rate varies with the nature of the security, from one to two per cent, per men- sem. — District Gazetteer, p. 57. 2. — Montgomery District. Mr. Purser, C.S., revised the settlement of this district. The work was begun in 1868, and com- pleted in 1874. Mr. Purser's knowledge of the district and people is more extensive and exact than that of any officer who has ever served in Mont- gomery. He had no society but that of the people, and no occupation but that of his work. His ability and learning are great. The extracts given below are from. 156 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [APP- his settlement report. His facts may be accepted as accurately true. The people of this district are a bold, sturdy set ; they are Character and dis- unsophisticated, and can laugh. But they position of the peo- avoid speaking the truth upon principle, and pie. withal He in such an artless and reckless way that a Hindustani would blush with shame at their silliness. They completely fail to grasp the idea of rights in property, when the property appears in the shape of their neighbour's cattle or wife. They are only moderately industrious. Some say they are lazy, but they are not. They are extravagant, ignorant, and superstitious. To travellers they extend a toler- able hospitality; but Hatim Tai need not look to his laurels on account of their rivalry. In fact, they seem made up of bad qualities and half-hearted virtues, yet there must be something good about them, for one gets to like them : but why, it would be hard to say. The revenue and the seed are usually borrowed ; and Indebtedness : Bun- there are very few villagers that are not niah's way of doing seriously in debt. This is matter of little business. importance, so long as the Kirar does not try to oust the proprietors and get the land into his own hands. But such a course is very rare in this district, because, except in the canal villages, a Kirar makes a great deal more as creditor of the owner of the land than he would as owner himself But the people are very bitter about the exactions of the Kirars, and make unpleasant comparisons between now and the good old Sikh times. Then if a man owed a Kirar money, and they could not arrange matters, the case went before the Kardar. The Kardar had the Kirar's books examined, and on being told how much principal and how much interest was due, he would say — "Strike off so much interest!" Then he would inquire how many cattle the debtor had. He would be told, so many. " And what are they worth ? " " Ten rupees each head." "Good, the Kirar must take the cattle at Rs. 12 each in payment of his debt;" and every body went off satisfied. Now the debtor offers cattle ; but the creditor prefers chehra shahi rupees. A suit is the consequence, and the debtor has to pay the costs in addition to the claim. The creditor, who before the suit had no desire to have the cattle, suddenly discovers that they are not without merit. He executes his decree, attaches the cattle worth Rs. 10 each, and buys them himself for Rs. 5. There is a great deal of truth in this account of matters ; but the fact seems to be totally forgotten that the Kirars did not rob the people then so A]- CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PLAIN. 157 much as they do now, simply because the Sikh Kardar took very good care that the people should have nothing whereof to be robbed. 3. — Muzaffargarh District. This district was settled by Mr. O'Brien, C. S., be- tween 1873 and 1880. He devoted him- self to his work, and lived amongst the people all the year round. There is no society in the district. Whilst Settlement Officer, he acqufred the Jatki dialect of the people, and made a collection of their pro- verbs and songs. It is impossible that an Englishman could have a greater knowledge of his charge than - had Mr. O'Brien. The extracts are from his settlement re- port. His facts may be relied on as correct. No [material difference in welfare exists between tenants Miserable state of with occupancy rights and tenants-at-will proprietors and in this district. The average area owned tenants in Muzaffar- by proprietors is five acres. Both proprie- garh. tors and tenants have an area for grazing, which is practically unlimited. Both proprietors and tenants live in what is literally a hand-to-mouth way. Each harvest barely suffices for the wants of the half year, and is almost always forestalled by borrowing. In regard to their economic state and habits, the agricultural classes naturally group themselves into Mahomedans and Hindus. Of the Mahomedan proprietors, 70 per cent, are in debt. Of the Hindu pro- prietors, 30 per cent, are in debt. It is very difficult to estimate what proportion the average indebtedness of the proprietors bears to the average yearly income. The lowest estimate in the materials before me says, that the amount borrowed yearly is equal to 30 per cent, of the yearly income of the indebted proprietors. The highest estimate gives the debts as 80 per cent, of the yearly income. Of Mahomedan tenants 40 per cent., and of Hindu tenants 20 per cent., are in debt. The yearly debts of the tenants are equal to 20 per cent, of their yearly income. The cause of the difference between the numbers of the indebted among Mahomedans and Hindus, respectively, is to be found in the difference of the habits of each class. Mahomedans are mostly spendthrift and improvident. The Hindus are the reverse. Mahomedans are nearly always uneducated ; Hindus are always more or 158 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [ App. less educated. Hindus usually avoid acts that would bring them within the reach of the criminal law, while Mahomedans supply almost the whole criminal population, and so incur the expenses which follow from being suspected by the police and being prosecuted. Mahomedans have only one source of income, viz., agriculture. Hindus, who own and cultivate land, almost always combine money-lending and trade with agriculture. Hindus acquire land as payment for debts. Mahomedans generally borrow money to buy land. * # * * * # * The indebtedness in this district is greater than in any Mr. Lyall endor- district with which I am acquainted. I ap- ses the Settlement pend some very true remarks of Mr. Lyall's Officer's opinion. on the subject, which he made when re- viewing the assessment report of the Alipur Tahsil : — "I quite agree with Mr. O'Brien's remarks as to the indebtedness of the agriculturists, and the faults in their character, which are its main cause. The same faults are attributed generally to the Mahomedan land-holders of all this southern corner of the Punjab, but they are found in this Tahsil in a very exaggerated form. The heavy floods, and the fever which follows, have something to do with it. The almost universal prosperity of the Kirar land-holders is proof that there is nothing crushing in the general pitch of the assessment. But as the Biluches, Syads, and Jats say, it would be folly to expect them to alter their characters and habits, and rival the thrift and fru- gahty of the Kirkrs. These Kirars are the Jews of the coun- try, and have a special natural aptitude for earning and saving money. The general character of the agriculturists must be considered in assessing ; but from what I have seen here and in Mooltan and Dera-Ghazi-Khan, I do not believe .that a very light assessment would tend to get them out of debt." 4. — Jhang District. Mr. Steedman, C. S., revised the settlement of Jhang Mr. Steedman. between 1 874 and 1 880. His knowledge of his district was thorough, as, like Mr. O'Brien, he lived amongst the people for years, and felt great sympathy with them. Like Montgomery and Muzafifargarh, Jhang is a secluded rural district, in which there are only one or two European officers, in addi- tion to the Deputy Commissioner. The extracts given below from Mr. Steedman's settlement report, faithfully A]. CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PLAIN. 1 59 represent the way the Jhang agriculturists have become involved in debt. When the owner of a good well or a fat piece of sailab How peasants fall deals with a Bunniah who is anxious to into debt. hold some land in mortgage, he finds that his credit is unlimited. It is a case of spending made easy. He can have whatever he wants whenever he wishes. All that he is troubled with, is his signature or assent to the usual six- monthly statement of accounts, and at harvest time he will make a few payments to the Bunniah in grain. This goes on for four or five years, or often longer. Then the demeanour of the creditor changes. He insists upon a registered bond for the amount due or a mortgage. The debtor temporises as long as he can, perhaps transfers his account to another shop, often takes his chance of a law-suit, trusting in his luck to evade some of the items. All these devices fail, and he makes over a share in his property on a verbal lekha-mukhi contract to his creditor. This is probably the very worst thing he could do. A lekha-mukhidar is as hardly displaced as was the old man of the sea. The zemindar never goes into the account, and is fleeced in every possible way. Instead of growing less, the debt grows larger, and a mortgage is at last gained." * * » * * * * * * The real and true cause of all our • woe was the mistaken The gift of full ^i'^ misplaced gift of full transferable proprietary right in proprietary right in land to the cultivator, land the original and with it of a vast credit, only limited by cause of indebted- tj,g ^Jz{n& of that proprietary right. It is "^^^' only of late that there has been an awaken- ing to the true facts of the case ; but that the cause stated is the true one, I have not the slightest doubt. The thriftj' and unembarrassed zemindars of this district can be counted upon one's fingers. So Extent of indebted- j^ug ^g a zemindar has credit, so long will ^^^ ■ he borrow, and so long as he borrows shall we find our annual returns of land-transfers slowly, but surely and steadily, increasing. The sole basis of his credit is his transferable property in the land. Take this away, and all the security that the moneylender has is the annual outturn of the crops. In such a case we should not hear of zemindars being thousands of rupees in debt. Their credit would shrink, and their debts too. There are numbers of villages along-side the Bar, east of Kot-Isashah, in which there is hardly a single mortgage. Why ? Because cultivation is uncertain, and the mortgagee might find the mortgaged well abandoned in a few l60 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. C*PP- months, and himself left saddled with the revenue. It is not good enough. Here the zemindars have no credit, and they are not in debt, except to a small amount. You do not find tenants-at-will over head-and-ears in debt. They are in debt it is true, but the limit is the amount that the Bunniah considers is pretty certain to be re-paid to him at the next harvest.— y^'"*i§' Gazetteer, pp. 94-96. 5. — Mooltan District. The settlement was revised by Mr. Roe, C. S., be- tween 1873 and 1880. His native assistant was a gentleman named Rai Hukur Chand, an officer of great experience and know- ledge of the district. The following is an extract from his opinion on the state of the agriculturists of the district. This opinion was given, in 1879, to the Famine Commis- sion. Proprietors. — These men are generally well, or fairly well, and some are very well off. Of the Mahomedans, 50 per cent, are in debt, but many are only temporarily so. They have to borrow to meet any emergency, but pay off the debt in two or three years. This 50 per cent, of the debtors may be thus sub-divided : — Per cent, (i). Those who are so involved that they cannot free themselves without selling all or a part of their land ... ... 10 (2). Those who are solvent, but cannot pay imme- diately ... ... ... 21; (3). Those who can pay immediately ... ig Debts are due to two main causes — (a) ostentation and pro- fligacy, (6) litigation, — i. e., cases arising out of spite and crimi- nal fines. Of tire Hindu proprietors, only some 15 per cent, are in debt. Of these, about half are petty Kirar zemindars, who are probably insolvent. The others can pay without difficulty. Occupancy tenants are generally poor; some are decently off, but few make more than a living. Some 20 per cent, of them are in debt, but their debts are small, and arise chiefly from agricultural misfortune, such as the death of bullocks sickness, &c., or from punishment in the criminal courts. The maurusis paying in cash are very few ; nearly all are men whose rents were authoritatively fixed at the last settlement, and who *]• CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PLAIN. l6l are practically sub-proprietors. Their profits are some 50 per cent, higher than those of the servants-at-will. Tenants-at-witl have to be sought for by the proprietors and settled at their expense on the wells. They are poor, but not more than 10 per cent, are in debt, and their debts are very petty. The Settlement Officer, Mr. Roe, after expressing his concurrence in the opinion just quoted, writes as follows : — We find the people just what, from the historical summary already given, we should expect them to be. Mr. Roe's opi- ^jj^ gj.gg(. ^^^^ ^f ^-^^^ 3j.g Mahomedan Jats, the descendants of Hindu tribes, some of whom may have come from Rajputana and Sindh, whilst others may have been in the country from long before the days of Alexander. Besides these, we have groups of Afghans, generally of superior position, who gained their lands with the Nawabs of Mooltan, and a considerable number of Hindu Kirars, who, for the most part, pushed their way, or were introduced by Sawan Mull, into nearly all the villages during the Sikh rule. Amongst the Jats, many of the better classes are men of energy and intelli- gence, taking a keen interest in the improvement of their estates, and managing them most successfully. But the bulk of the smaller zemindars are ignorant and careless farmers , destitu te of energy, drifting along vvithout a^thought for. the morrow, and not attempting to look into their accounts as .long as the money- lender will give themjjj_aiisiaiLce. When the day of settlement comes at last, and they find themselves hopelessly involved, they attribute their ruin, not to their own laziness and extravagance, but to the >ayarice oj \h&.Kimr. and look to the District Officer to cancel their debts and reduce their assessments. Some excuse may be made for them in the fact that they were quite unpre- pared for our system of cash assessments. * * The Hindu Kirars, as a rule, are thrifty and hardworking, and most of those who own land have little to do with money-lending. Most of the leading Afghans are, like many of the leading Jats, energetic and intelligent, but they suffer from the same vice of extravagance. Men who should be walking, think they must keep their horse ; those who could properly afford one or two horses, think they must keep five or six : men who would be men of substance and position, if they would only look after their property themselves, think it adds to their dignity to transact all their business through a mukhtar or agent. The consequence is, that there is a very serious amount of indebted- ness. Only the amount due on regular mortgages has been recorded in the settlement papers, and this can hardly be accepted W 1 62 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. C^PP" as absolutely correct. But it is hardly likely to be over the mark, for against exaggerations intended to defeat pre-emption, may be set oft accidental omissions. Taking the am.ount of the liabilities shown in the statements as approximately correct, they cover 2-4 per cent, of the total area. At the regular settlement the area mortgaged was i'7 per cent, of the whole. It is, how- ever, probable that the increase has not really been, so great as this, for at the regular settlement the importance of obtaining a record of the mortgage was hardly so well understood, and there were probably more omissions then than now. No attempt has been made to record the amount due on lekha-mukhi mortgages, but the area aflected by them (counting only those which are proved or admitted) is 7-2 per cent, of the whole. Adding this to the regular mortgages, the total area pledged is 97 per cent, of the whole : this is a very serious amount of debt. Colonel Wace's re- In reviewing Mr. Roe's report, marks on changes in the economic con- Colonel Wace comments upon the dition of the people , 1 under British rule. above remarks :— On the whole, Mr. Roe attributes the d^ts of the agri- culturists^rather to the ir apa thy, -itiTpTovidence, and (in a few cases) recldessness, than to the necessary results of our^ysfem of fixed~cash assessnients. Though I do not desire to detra.ct from the weight due to an opinion based on seven years' inti- mate association with the agricultural classes of the district, I think that few of us, in forming our judgment of the cases of existing agricultural indebtedness, adequately realise the changes in the economic condition of the people introduced since annex- ation. Within tlifi_la5t_33 year s the people have passed rapidly from a system of direct dependence on the assistance a nd super- vision of the ruler, to one in which they are thrown entirely on their ownjresaurces.- The change is forcibly "described"! n~" the reply* on this subject furnished to the Famine Commission by Mr. O'Brien, Settlement Officer of Muzafiargarh * » * * There can be no doubt that the continued bad farming, extra- vagance, and improvidence of the agricultural classes, has produced the present state of indebtedness. But if we go further and ask what caused the bad farming, extravagance, and improvi- dence, the answer is, that the peoplejvere .nejifixjtraifted-for. the positionjn whkh Uiey are placed by our Goverqm ent, and were never fit for such a po'sition.' Under former Governments they were kept, as regards agriculture, in a state of tutelage. They were quite unaccustomed to manage for themselves. The Go- vernment Kardars did everything for them, made them cultivate * Punjab Replies to the Famine Commission, pp. 459-500. A]. CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PLAIN. 1 63 the land, made the Hindus lend them money and seed, and made the borrowers repay. The agriculturists were pitted against one another to cultivate, If one man did not cultivate his land it was taken from him and given to another who would cultivate. After annexatioii.JJiia.jniaiitg„-5HJpg'.rinfeafU»aee-was~^thdrawn. — Mooltan'Gasetteer, p. 86. 6. — Bannu District. I made the first regular settlement of the Bannu Indebtedness in district between 1872 and 1879. In Mianwah. f|-,y report I did not draw as much at- tention as I ought to have done to the depressed state of the Cis-Indus tract of Mianwali. As I lived chiefly Trans- Indus, and as the frontier tahsils received the larger share of my attention, the Cis-Indus portion of the district, which lies from 70 to 90 miles away from head-quarters, across three troublesome, unbridged rivers, were comparatively little in my thoughts. Ij however, knew the Mianwali tract well, having been in solitary charge of it for the two years preceding the commencement of settlement operations. Its area is nearly 1,500 square miles, throughout which, except in the bed of the Indus, a fixed cash assessment is levied. The rainfall is about 12 inches. The people are much in debt, and fast losing their best lands to non-agriculturists. The following extracts are from my settlement report :■ — The large majority of the land-owning classes are self- cultivating peasants of small means and peopTe?ene"aUy. "' frugal habits. With two important excep- •^ "^ tions, they are all lairly prosperous and in infinitely easier circumstances than they were thirty years ago. * ■ * * * « * These remarks apply to the ordinary peasant, but with two exceptions. They are the Marwats of ^ R)verty of the Mar- ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ j^^jj. ^^ Marwat, and those of the Bannuchis, whose holdings are so minute, as to give the owners a bare subsistence. With both the struggle for existence is terrible, when anything occurs to increase expenditure or reduce income, and numbers 164 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDKRS. [ App. drop down every unfavorable year into the position of tenants or of labourers. With the former, once a debt of the class known as ghara (neck) is incurred, it is pretty certain that in a few years the debtor must sell his land. This pernicious ghara sys- tem of securing a loan dates from some twenty years back. Under it the debtor either engages to pay as interest a certain portion of his earnings, and thus makes himself the quasi-honda- man of his creditor, or a certain measure of grain each harvest, crop or no crop. * * * * * *. In the other exceptional case, that of the owners, of the minutest of the minute Bannuchi holdings, Government neither can nor ought to do anything. The assessment is fair, and a crop being a certain- ty, our system is elastic enough. The cause of the smallness of the holdings is over-population, and for that the State is not called upon to find a remedy. Besides, the Bannuchis are such a poor hybrid race as to be of little political account. With them there is no fear of a stalwart hereditary peasantry being expro- priated as there is in Marwat. Now to pass on to the landlord class — the sufaid-poshes — who Improvidence and do not cultivate with their own hands. As indebtedness of the a rule, they are neither so frugal nor pros- landlord classes. perous as the better of the peasant proprie- tary class. Good 20 per cent, of them are deeply involved in debt, and a large minority habitually live beyond their income. A few of course, say lo per cent., are shrewd, careful men, and their holdings and incomes are growing, not diminishing, in amount. Old families sink into poverty from two causes, both due to a foolish pride. The head of the house thinks he must maintain a reputation for hospitality, the highest of virtues amongst Pathans, and to maintain it he mortgages and borrows freely. Then his sons are brought up in idleness and married early, and no matter how the res angusta domi may press, they disdain to work with their own hands. 7- — Dera-Ismail-Khan District. Mr. Tucker, C. S., made the first regular settlement Mr. Tucker. °^ Dera-Ismail-Khati between 1872 and 1879. He had an intimate know- ledge of his charge, and did his best to remove ail neces- sity for indebtedness on account of a fixed revenue demand in a country of uncertain crops, by introducing a fluctuating system of assessment, wherever it appeared A]- CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PLAIN. l6S feasible. In the short extracts given below, he states simple facts, and does not examine into causes. When lands are mortgaged to Hindus, the mortgagor generally remains in possession, paving ^^Mortgages gener- ^^^^^^ ^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^j^^ produce, or a fixed amount in cash or grain, or regular cash interest. In these latter cases, the property is only collateral security for the payment of the debt, and the revenue is paid by the mortgagor as before. Where cash interest is taken, the rate is generally Rs. 1-9 per cent, per mensem. Where the mortgagee gets a share of the produce, he has generally to pay a corresponding share of the revenue, — sometimes he pays the whole revenue. Another sort of mortgage is the ordinary usufructuary mortgage, where the mortgagee keeps an account of the produce, and charges it against the principal and interest of the debt. In these parts, however, the profits from the land are seldom applied to meeting the principal, which is paid off in a lump sum at redemption. Hindus rarely take over the cultivation of mortgaged lands, as they find that the old pro- prietor makes the best tenant, and his affection for his old fields makes him submit to harder terms, as regards rent, than would be accepted by an outsider. There are seldom any detailed provisions as to redemption of mortgages. They are generally for no fixed term, and can be redeemed after the wheat harvest has been cut. ******* In the Dera, Bhakkar, and Leiah tahsils, the bulk of the mortgages are held by Hindus. As a rule. Mortgages Cis-In- jj,g greatest amount of mortgage is to be found in well tracts. Proprietary rights in wells were clearly recognised under native Governments, and a large portion of these well-mortgages date back to pre-annexation days. The cultivators of sflzVrtte and Daman lands originally held the position rather of tenants than of proprietors, their rights being acknowledged only so long as they cultivated their lands efficiently. Such lands, therefore, were only mortgaged in the more settled tracts. To the present day there is but little . mortgage in the river villages, where lands are liable to be washed away, and do not therefore afford sufficient security to the money-lender. In parts of the Bhakkar and Leiah Kachi the population is very much indebted, and there is no doubt that many of these small Mahomedan proprietors must even- tually be sold up. Mr. Lyall endorsed the above conclusion in the fol- lowing words : — J 66 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. 1^ ^P^" All we can do is to amend anything in our revenue , ,„ ^ system which tends to hurry on the pro- Mr. Lyalls des- J minority of these men have Tthf doSX proved fit'for the imVoved status which whatever is is right. we gave them ; the majority will descena in time into the position which suits them, of mere tillers ot the soil, with enough to live upon, but no credit to pledge and no property to lose. Their original position under native Governments was little better than this. It is of course the too frequent elevation of the despised Kimr or Hindu money- lender over the heads of a naturally dominant Mahomedan population which is the worst part of the ch&ng&.—Oistnct Gazetteer, pp. 89-91. I served in D.-I.-Khan from 1882 to 1884, both years included, as Deputy Commissioner, and latterly as Divi- sional Judge, and during those four years collected much irrformation on agricultural indebtedness. In June, 1884, I submitted a report on the subject to Government, from which I here take the following extract : — My inquiries lead me to believe that, excluding the five to Myself on indebt- eight lakhs of petty debts most of which edriess in Dera- could be easily paid off after any average Ismail-Khan. harvest, the debts at present owed by Maho- medans to Hindus in this district, amount to between 12 and 14 lakhs of rupees. Taking the lower figure of 1 2 lakhs, the annual interest on it is not less than on the average 18 per cent, or Rs. 2,16,000. The true state of the indebtedness of the agri- cultural population of this or any other district will only be disclosed when a debt commission be appointed, and ascertain publicly at his home in typical villages in each locality the debt owed by each hereditary agriculturist. The process is not difficult. I have myself carried it out in some villages in the Bannu district. So far as my inquiries have gone, they warrant a conclusion that the following table is no exaggeration of the truth : — State of indebtedness, if any, Mahomedans^ Already ruined Irretrievably involved Seriously, but retrievably involved ... Would be free with two good crops and a little thrift Owing nothing, or if anything, under Rs. 50, and easily able to pay it ... 13 10 z8 26 23 *]• CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN PLAIN. 167 In all that I have hitherto written, I have, to the best of my ability, endeavoured to rather under than over-:-tate what I be- lieve to be facts. That I am no pessimist, but rather the reverse, a perusal of paras. 67 and 68 of my Bannu Settlement Report will prove ; but in those paras. I seem to have omitted to take into account the state of the agricultural population of the Mianwali, Thai, and Mohar tracts, now, I believe, in very de- pressed circumstances. I also hoped that the extreme moder- ation of my Trans-Indus assessments would eventually free most deserving debtors from their embarrassments. I acknowledge that the material prosperity of this district Increase in material is greater than it was before annexation, prosperity of the dis- The value and quantity of gold and silver '"•^f- ornaments worn by Hindus — men, women, and children, — at festivals, — e. g., the Baisakhi, cannot but strike strangers with the comparative wealth of that inteUigent and frugal people. Then as to Mahomedans, they eat better, dress better, have more metal vessels in their houses than before annexation. What Mr. Lyall remarked in the quotation made in para. 8, — viz., "the majority" (of the Mahomedan proprietors) "will descend in time into the position which suits them, of mere tillers of the soil, with enough to live upon, but no credit to pledge, and no property to lose : their original position under native Governments was little better than The crux is the this," — is perfectly true in one sense. But which is ^^befaUing ^^ shaped and defined the rights of those agricultural classes. Mahomedan proprietors. We gave them landed status, and taught them to value it, and they are losing those rights and that status in consequence of "our system;" and whether in a material sense they are as well off now as under native Governments, or even better off, is aside-issue only, because besides being materially poorer to- day than they were, say, twenty years ago, they are also worse off in this important respect, that they were under native Governments members of the dominant caste, or connected with it at all events ; whereas now they are becoming servants of the then dependent and still despised caste. Again, in years of drought before annexation, the Mahomedan cultivator could easily save himself and cattle by migrating elsewhere, but now through the increase of population and the recording of rights, vested and well protected interests everywhere shackle his free- dom of movement, and obstruct or forbid free squatting and free selecting even of a temporary nature. Though, too, it is true that the " cultivated area " is double what it was at an- nexation, and that the population has not increased at a similar ratio, still the ratio of increase between the two can only be usefully compared in generally good and average years. In the 1 68 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. CAPP' frequently recurring years in which crops are confined to pro- tected localities, the extra lakh of mouths to be fed find no food in the extra two lakhs of acres of " cultivated area." All these are considerations which detract much from the value of what is in one sense a truism, that the cultivating class is no worse off now than it was under native rule. * * * 8. — D era- Ghazi- Khan District. Mr. Fryer, C. S., made the first regular settlement of this district between 1868 and 1875. Mr. Fryer. ' In his report he says very little upon the subject of agricultural indebtedness. In 1879 his native assistant, a gentleman named Chiman Lai, who had served for about 20 years in the district, and knew the history of almost every family in it, reported to the Famine Commission that two-thirds of the Mahomedan land- owners and fully half the tenants, whether occupancy or tenants-at-will, were involved in debt (pp. 68-69 of District Gazetteer'). I was in charge of the district during the greater part of 1881, and think that the above opinion is correct. The Mahomedans, with the exception of the best of the great Biluch tribal chiefs whom Government has wisely treated very liberally, are generally as depressed as are their brethren Cis-Indus in Muzaffargarh. BJ- CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE NORTHERN TABLE-LAND. 1 69 APPENDIX B. PRESENT CONDITION OF THE PEASANTRY IN THE SIX DISTRICTS OF THE NORTHERN TABLE-LAND AND IN THE ADJOINING DISTRICT OF GUJRANWALA. I. — Hazara District. Colonel Wace, now Junior Financial Commissioner, made the first regular settlement be- Colonel Wace. _,„ , „ tt . tween 1808 and 1874. He has devoted most of his time, since his first appointment in the Punjab Commission, in 1863, to the study of revenue and eco- monic subjects. Next to Mr. Lyall, late Financial Com- missioner of the Punjab, his knowledge of the people is more comprehensive than that of any officer now serving in the Punjab. Rather lengthy extracts from his settle- ment report of Hazara are given below, as his opinions are of great value. In Sikh rule, owing to the scarcity of money and the I J Kt small portion of the agriculturists' farm in sfkhdmS! produce that has any marketable value (little besides Jthe grain and butter), debt once incurred was repaid with difficulty. The agriculturists feared to borrow, and they rarely did so, except — (is/), to pay the State revenue or a fine; (2nd), in case of famine, failure, or destruction of crops, or when there was really no food to be got in any other way ; and {^rd), very occasionally at mar- riages and deaths : under ordinary circumstances, rather than borrow they were content to live in a state which their sons would now regard as poverty. Similarly, money-lending was confined to the better classes among the Khatris ; the same circumstances which made the agriculturists careful in bor- rowing, made these Khatris careful how they lent money. If the money was wanted for purposes of extravagance, they would not usually lend, and their loans to ordinary agriculturists did not generally exceed Rs. 20 at one time. The common rate of interest was one per cent, per mensem, though for doubtful loans X 170 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [App. or by small lenders Rs. 2 would be charged. To charge more than one per cent, was considered a mark of unsound business, and therefore, for the credit of their business, the best Khatris ordinarily charged one per cent. Moreover, the security for the repayment of the principal was great : public opinion reprobated the repudiation of a loan, no matter what interval had elapsed : even a man's heirs were bound to pay. And the rulers of the country recovered any debt, no matter how old, for a charge of one-fourth of its amount. It is not too much to say that nearly the whole of these „ ,. . conditions have been reversed during the Conditions revers- . t-, , ^ ■ ij. 1 ed upon annexation. P^^t 30 years. The value of agricultural and milch produce has more than doubled, and the very straw and grass grown on an agriculturist's holding is now saleable. Simultaneously the area under cultivation has been greatly increased, and the proportion of the produce ab- sorbed by the State's demand is rateably less than half what the Sikh Government took. It is, moreover, still absolutely less in amount than was taken by that Government, in spite of the enor- mous increase in assets and their value, and even after taking into account the rise in the assessment introduced in 1872. More- over, the rise in values did not occur gradually, but took place suddenly, being introduced by the famine of 1860-61. The agriculturists consequently found themselves suddenly enabled to pay oif old debts with a rapidity which was quite unexpected by them : the produce of their cattle and land they found to be rapidly rising in value, allowing them to live more freely and in greater comfort than they had ever before experienced. Along with this we introduced an important change in the law, applic- able to the class of loans usually contracted between agriculturists and Khatris : the period of limitation for their recovery, original- ly reduced at annexation to 12 years, was, by successive steps finally contracted in 1867 to three years; and it also became known that our law did not bind a son to pay the debts of his father except under certain limitations. The general result of these changes was to loosen the restrictions hitherto observed both by the agriculturist and Khatri. The agriculturist, finding his produce of all kinds so much more marketable, and so large- ly increased in value and amount, has lost the fear of debt which before restrained him : two or three good harvests will now enable him to repay a sum, which he would hardly have dared to borrow before ; and he looks to the limited period within which the lender can recover the loan by appeal to our courts in much the same light as an English farmer would regard the Bankruptcy Court. If, owing to unforeseen failures of crops, he is unable to repay the loan, he hopes by the aid of the hmitation law to evade it altogether. The agriculturists consequently now ^]- CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE NORTHERN TABLE- LAND. 171 borrow on much lighter grounds than before, and no longer res- trict such transactions to occasions of real necessity. Unfortu- nately their intelligence has not increased with their wealth ; they draw on their Khatri recklessly, and accept his accounts blindly. On the other hand, the Khatris are fully alive to the bear- ing of these circumstances on their interests. The circumstances of the agriculturists being so greatly improved, there is no longer the same occasion for the Khatris to limit so carefully the amount of their loans. And seeing, on the one hand, that their clients are so ready to borrow and so well able to pay, and on the other hand, that our courts refuse to enforce any but fresh debts, it was inevitable that they should raise their charges for interest : two or even three per cent, per mensem is now a com- mon charge for loans, and for doubtful loans even more is charged. — District Gasetteey, pp. in-113. In the above there is little about the Hazara district Prosperity of Ha- Its State is, however, generally pros- ^^f^- perous. Although the landlord classes are almost all deeply involved in debt, the cultivators are generally unembarrassed. Colonel Wace held, that although there is now more borrowing, there is less real indebtedness amongst the agriculturists of the district than there was in Sikh times. I have lately taken over charge of Hazara from Mr. Fryer. In the district note he left for me, he recorded that all the leading men, except five, were more or less in debt. 2. — Peshawar District. The late Colonel Hastings, C. B., settled Peshawar between 1869 and 1876. He was very sympathetic with the people and knew them well. In his report he says little about agricultural indebtedness. I believe that the peasantry are not gene- rally in debt, but that a large proportion of the landlord class is. The following extract from Colonel Hastings' report is taken from page 135 of the District Gazetteer. The people, as a rule, although better off than under former rulers, are not extricating themselves from debt. If report 172 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. CApp. is true, debts are, and have, increased chiefly owing to that bad custom which induces them to vie with one another in expendi- ture at marriages and deaths. More money is now spent on jewels, food, and clothes than used to be. Gambling, too, which is becoming very common, has much to say to the indebtedness of certain classes. Cash loans are obtainable between the rates of I and 3 per cent, interest per mensem : as much as 25 and 50 per cent, are charged for loans repayable at the next harvest. For seed-loans, from half ser to one ser per maund is paid as interest. Money is obtainable, on a deposit of jewels, at Re. 1-9 per cent, per mensem. It is not unusual to find land mortgaged to two persons, the proprietary right to one and the cultivating right to another. Till this settlement, the ordinary custom in the district was for proprietors to mortgage their lands, give over possession to the mortgagees, but still continue responsible for the Government demand. For the future, such agreements as these are not attended to : the revenue is primarily recovered from the person in possession. The debts are chiefly due to the local shop-keepers. 3. — Kohat District. This district has just been settled by Mr. Tucker, C. S. In his report he says nothing about the prosperity or otherwise of the agricultural classes. I do not know whether there is a gazetteer of the district or not. For the reasons given in page 90 of this book, I do not think that the agriculturists are much in debt, or that money- lenders have acquired rights to any serious extent in their lands, except perhaps in the best protected localities. 4. — Rawalpindi District. Mr. Robertson, C. S., is just completing the revised Mr. Robertson. settlement of the district. The land rew- nue demand has been raised by about 35 per cent, all round. Mr. Robertson considers the agri- culturists fairly prosperous, and after more than six months' acquaintance with the district as Deputy Commissioner my opinion is the same. In the southern tracts, in which the rainfall is much less than nearer the Himalayas, and the crops poorer and more uncertain, there is, I believe, ^ ]• CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE NORTHERN TABLE-LAND. I 73 considerable indebtedness : many of the landlord class are also in debt, but when so, deserve no sympathy. I refer the reader to page 91 of this book. The following passage is taken from pp. y^-jj of the Gazetteer, I do not know on what authority the opening assertion is based. The prosperity of the district is. attested by the fact that the peasantry are rapidly extricating them- districr"'^ s^l^^^ *'''°'" ^^^'- U"'^^'' Sikh rule, fully 50 per cent, are said to have been in debt, but it is believed that not more than 10 per cent, of the cultivating classes are now involved. The present rate of interest for a cash ' loan is a deduction of one anna in the rupee at the time the money is paid (this is called taraw at), and afterwards at the rate of 2 per cent, per mensem on the full amount. In loans of grain the interest is often 50, never less than 25, per cent. ; a maund of grain being given for seed on a bond to return at harvest time one and a quarter or one and a half maund, as the case may be. Money can be had, on a deposit of jewels, at a rate of one per cent, per mensem, and where land is mortgaged as security, interest is seldom paid in money. If possession is given to the mortgagee, the whole produce is set ofi against interest, the mortgagee bearing the expense of management and paying the revenue; if not, one half the produce is ordinarily given in lieu of interest. There are very few large native bankers, and loans are chiefly conducted by local shop-keepers. There is no evidence of accumulation of coin ; but the increased quan- tity of jewellery and trinkets worn by the people, taken with their generally improved style of dress and mode of living, goes far to prove that much of the profit resulting from a peaceful rule and a moderate assessment, finds its way into the pockets of the cultivating classes. Savings are chiefly in- vested in jewellery, but a growing desire is manifested to buy up land. 5. — Jhelum District. The revision of the settlement of this district was Colonel Wace and effected by Colonel Wace and Mr. Thom- Mr. Thomson. gom, C. S., between 1874 and 1881. The peasantry are said by some officers to be generally prosperous, but the evidence on the subject is unsatisfac- tory. The following extract from the Deputy Commis- sioner's report to the Famine Commission, in 1879, is taken 174 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [App. {mm page gi of the District Gazetteer. I believe Colonel Wace was at the time the Deputy Commissioner. The agriculturists give all their grain to the Bunniahs at harvest time. It is the custom to charge Rates of interest. . ... r i j' two annas in the rupee for lending money. Thus, when a man gives a bond for Rs. loo, he only receives Rs. 87-8. He is then charged interest on the Rs. 100 at two annas (12^ per cent. ) per harvest ; the unpaid interest being added at each harvest to the principal. Thus, a man who borrows Rs. 87-8 will in three years owe Rs. 227-13, and in six years Rs. 460-11. The old custom was not to balance the account every harvest, but only when the debtor wished to settle it, or other special occasion arose ; and for the oldest account not more than 50 per cent, was charged as interest if cash was paid, or 100 per cent, if settled by paying in grain or cattle. Moreover, both debtors and creditors are equally care- less, the one in borrowing and the other in lending. A culti- vator with a small holding used not to be able to borrow more than Rs. 20. Now he can run into debt up to Rs. 100 or Rs. 200. Another reason is that, in the old days, land could not be sold at all, whereas it now fetches a large sum. The following remarks are by an old and experienced , , .„ native Settlement Officer named Mirza Mirza Azim Beg. Azim Beg. They were submitted to the Famine Commission in 1879. As regards the economic condition of the agriculturists An experienced na- of these districts,* there is no very broad live gentleman's opin- distinction between the condition of owners, ion on indebtedness occupancy-tenants, and tenants-at-will. For ind Gu^rat' "'^'''"'"' ^'^^ ^'"^' '° ^^^^^ ^'^''^^ annexation the con- "■''^ ■ dition of all classes improved greatly ; the harvests were nearly always good ; cultivation was increasing ; they bought milch cattle and jewels, and fed and clothed them- selves much better than they had previously done. By-and- bye the crops began to become poorer on the new lands, and some bad seasons occurred. The leases of the first settlement ran out, and the agriculturists were called on to pay revenue on the lands newly cultivated. It also became difficult for them to keep cattle, for they had cultivated their own waste lands, and the larger wastes had been formed into Government preserves. So the owners gradually got into debt and the occupancy-tenants. The tenants-at-will who pay a share of the produce, pilfer a good deal from the crop before it is divided • * Hazara, Jhelum, and Gujrat. B]- CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE NORTHERN TABLE-LAND. I75 and they are commonly village craftsmen, adding by their trade earnings to the receipts from their land. The average condition of agriculturists in the three districts* of which I am writing may be taken to be as follows. * * * * # * The agriculturists do not usually store grain in their houses ; they give it all at harvest time to the village traders. In the northern part of the Hazara district, there is a custom by which at every harvest the village banker takes from the agriculturist as interest an odi (four sers) of grain for every rupee owed to him. It an agriculturist cannot pay this interest the cash value of the grain due is reckoned and added to the account. Cases sometimes occur in which, by this custom, all a man's harvest is swallowed up in interest. In the same way most of the agriculturists of all three r- 1 ■ J u. J districts are in debt — perhaps 21; per cent. General indebted- r . /-.J. ^. . , , . jjess. ^'^^ ^^^^> '^°^ more. Of those in debt, about one-third owe as much as one year's income, and this proportion is steadily increasing. To test the matter, I examined the accounts of 23 families Test exam les ^° ^'^ different villages, and found that examp es. whereas they only held land assessed at Rs. 368 per annum, they owed Rs. 3,182, of which Rs. 1,283 was admittedly interest ; and of the balance, Rs. 1,899, it is difficult to say how much is really principal and how much old interest ; but, so far as I can ascertain, only one-third of this Rs. 1,899 is principal and the rest is all accumulated interest. The men who owe this possess jewels, value Rs. 972, and goods and chattels, value Rs. 334, and their land besides. Examining nine other villages, I found that of 347 agricul- tural holdings, 164 were free of debt; 97 owe sums not exceeding 10 times their annual assessment ; 65 owe more than that, but less than 30 times the annual assessment. The total annual assessment of these nine villages is Rs. 4,226, and their total debts are Rs. 32,454. The real reason of these debts is original- ly the extravagance of the zemindars, and subsequently heavy charges of interest. The accounts are opened with items of all descriptions, from payments of revenue to common expenses ; but the real reason of the debts is as above stated. In Jhelura it is the custom to charge two annas in the rupee for lending money : thus, where a bond is How a debt gjyen for Rs. loo, the debtor has only ^ ■ received Rs. 87-8, and then he is charged on the said Rs. 100 interest at two annas per rupee (i2| per * Hazara, Jhelum, and Gujrat. II 6 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. C App. cent.) per harvest, the unpaid interest being added at each harvest to the principal. At this rate, in three years' time the debtor's account shows Rs. 227-13 due, though the sum actually bor- rowed was only Rs. 87-8. Thus he has been charged Rs. 140-5 interest. If the debt runs on in the same way for three years more, its total will then stand at Rs. 460-11. The old custom was not to balance the account every harvest, but only when the zemindar wished to settle it, or other special occasion arose ; and for the oldest account not more than 50 per cent, was charged as interest if cash was paid, or 100 per cent, if settled by paying in grain or cattle. Moreover, both debtors and creditors are equally careless the debtor in borrowing and the creditor in lending. A culti- vator with a small holding used not to be able to borrow more than Rs. 20. Now he can borrow Rs. 100 or Rs. 200 ; or rather the sum he originally borrowed was small, and the debt has increased by interest. The creditor bides his time, and when he sees the debtor can pay, will press him in our courts. Another reason is this : the land will sell for a large sum ; for instance, in the case of the 23 families owing Rs. 3,182 above mentioned, they own 327 acres of land, which, if sold, would, at the rates now obtain- able for land — Rs. 84 per acre — fetch Rs. 27,599. In former days land could not be sold at all ; but it should be remembered that if much land were offered for sale, such high prices would soon fail. 6. — Gujrat District. Colonel Waterfield, C. S. I., now Commissioner of the Colonel Waterfleld. ^^^^awar Division, revised the settle- ment of this district between 1865 and 1869. The question of agricultural indebtedness was then little discussed. Colonel Waterfield's remarks on the subject are taken from pp. 66-67 of the District Gazetteer. It would seem that the debts had increased as the settle- ment operations advanced. But the people account for the great increase m registration by saying that the debts have not reallv increased, but that the advantages of registration are now perfectly clear to the money^ending classes. * . * * The attendance of the borrowing classes at the Settlement tourts was an opportunity not to be lost by the money-lenders who ?':°lPA7'"f *'^';,tb'°'-^ t° the tahsils,made them not oni; register the debts of the year, but the balances of their accounts and the unpaid debts of former years. Whether the indebted- ness ,s greater than in other districts, cannot be judged of ^3- CONDITION OF PEASANTRY OF THE NORTHERN TABLE-LAND. 177 without the facts ; but a more uncomplaining lot of debtors cannot well be found. If the registered debts are Rs. 2,50,000 the unregistered debts must amount to half as much again ; in all, to more than half the Government demand for the year. But the Government demand being only one-sixth of the gross produce, one-fourth of the latter is only liable for debts and land revenue, and a large margin is left. Notwithstanding the apparently prosperous condition of the district, the people are no doubt much in debt, and the registration of bonds had largely increased in 1867. 7. — Giijranwala District* This district adjoins those of Gujrat, Shahpur, Jhang, and Montgomery, all in the Western Punjab, and has a population of 453,000 Musalmans and only 164,000 Hindus and Sikhs. It is therefore more a Musalman than a Hindu district. I at first intended to include it in the Western Punjab, but owing to its vicinity to Lahore, the strength of the Hindus and Sikhs in it as dominant agricultural tribes, and the fact that after some months of service in the district I came to the conclusion that the Musalmans were very lax Mahomedans, I finally de- cided to treat the district as in the central division of the Punjab. This, however, does not preclude my giving the following extract from a report on the condition of the people, submitted in 1879 to the Famine Commission, by the late Mr. Tolbort, C. S., the then District Officer. The native gentleman Rai Gopal Das, whose opinion is referred to, is, I believe, the oldest and most experienced Settlement Officer in the Punjab. The bulk of the land of this district is cultivated by the owners themselves. It is estimated that not more than 13 per cent, of the land is cultivated by tenants, whether occupancy or tenants-at-will ; and of the two classes of tenants, those at-will are more numerous than those having a right of occupancy. * See pages 243-46 of Indian Famine Commission Report [Appendix), Vol. Ill, Evidence in reply to inquiries. Y 1^8 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [App. It is estimated that 80 per cent, of the owners, 20 per cent. General indebted- of the occupancy tenants, and lo per cent. ness. of the tenants-at-will, are indebted. It is further estimated that the average indebtedness of the owners is about 30 per cent, on their average yearly income; while the average indebtedness of the occupancy-tenants, similarly calculated, is estimated at 12 percent., and that of the tenants-at- will at 5 per cent. Rai Gopal Dass enumerates ten causes, to which he attri- butes the greater indebtedness of the own- Rai Gopal Dass. ers of land during recent years The first six of these may be comprised under the general expression " personal extravagance." The seventh is " frequent attendance at court." The eighth, " rapid growth of interest and compound interest through the working of the limitation laws." The ninth, " rise in price of agricultural cattle." The tenth appears to be a general observation to the effect that owners of land now regard themselves as able to dis- pose of the fee-simple of their estates, which formerly was not the case ; and on the other hand, the money-lending classes have now become eager to obtain possession of land. The land-owners of this district are not, I think, so indebted as those of many others. In enumerating the causes of agricul- tural indebtedness, I would certainly add " the inequality and want of elasticity of our revenue system " to those above detailed ; and I am inclined to think that the eighth cause in the above list (which reflects on the law of limitation) might be modified so as to designate " inadequate and indiscriminating judicial investigation caused partly by over- refinement legislation, undue size of districts, and overwork of the district staff." C]. EFFECT OF REFORMS IN LAND-TENURE. 179 t— 1 w CM ;00 « ON \o ■i=i°i T-n r^ p-ci-.u-)(SroNONO'^M 3 ■^ o\ ■sjBlBqC puB sj|3M moaj paWSH-iI 00 w : "^ M xr^inoo t;)- 0N\0 v£) in i-i ON ON M M 00 •saSB]itA aSjBI puB suMo:i puno^ 10 N vO OsVO •* 0^ P^ ■^O i^tr) CO •-< 00 -LTiOO rn fOvO -^ ON . m M 00 d X P 5 D J y « < a i 1 < •IBJOi ^ ON On ■^'^o LT) *i-vo 00 r^ t~>. i/^vo 0^ t^ On ^"O m ■^ cm\ ^ ^J~t POOO" T?TfrOi-rrfiOiOiON" 00 in •psjEAiiinDUXl On 00 t-^ 01 -rt-vo ON HH u-i ON M 00 OS ON CD u^co 00 q. ys "J^ oTod cfrooT foioio^fpf ON ON W P. < ■4- 1 1 •JCTBO 10 ONu^O 10 MM ON -<:i- cnoo : CO : "^ : ^^ ■* >-, Tj-in . -low . u-j m N CO •aoiiEpunui J3AU lapun JO 'qyipS w « VO m 00 CO ONOO >-« 1^ ON 10 ; CO i-i : I>.QG N CO to W . M . MM to M m 'll^jurej loojip Japan JO 'luyj^g J>.00 -^ 00 J>hIOu-j30 G^OO VO 10 -^J- "^Nt^QM'^aNM VO : U-) M CO M_ q_ "^^ M . in » Average annual land revenue (fixed, fluctuating, and mis. cellaneous), 1877 to 1881. N 00 0^ On r^fOO N lOONNvO lOO in rj- Td- I~-,vO 10 M N ON M VO M 000 M t--.tOCOrl-^N w'vo 00" in in gnoo' lood ocTocT W 1000 On uiqO N m N yD ^ '!? -^ ro^o'vo in ■<:? 10 ■^ rC in ■0 M in in 00 Hi " a Bannu D.-I.-Khan D.-G.-IChan Rawalpindi Jhelum Gujrat Shahpur Montgomery Jhang Mooltan Muzaffargarh < 2 5" c/2 1 1 •^ UTO I>.00 On M c^ CO ■^ l8o MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. f ^PP' APPENDIX D. * THE FAMINE COMMISSION ON RELATIVE ADVANTAGES OF FIXITY AND ELASTICITY OF DEMAND. ***** 3. It is asserted that the present rigid system of collection is not only productive of temporary hardship to the agricultural classes, but often inflicts permanent injury RigKlity of fixed , plunging them into indebtedness, from assessments injurious. ■^ . '^ . ? ° „ , ^ tu^ which It IS rare for them to recover, ihe depressed condition of the land-owners in Jhansi and in the Deccan districts is heldby some authorities to be due in part to the too severe enforcement of the payment of the land revenue in unfavourable seasons ; and it is the behef ofmany experienced officials that there is no more effectual form of relief in times of pressure than a postponement of the Government demand. 4. These opinions command great respect from the weight of authority by which they are supported. They have of late been the subject of special inquiries on the part of the Govern- ment of India with a view to ascertaining from local officials, practically familiar with the working of the Difference of opi- revenue system, the results of their ex- rXms." ""''"""'"S perience as to the reality of the evils alleged to arise from a system of unvarying collec- tions, and the feasibility of the plans suggested for its reform. We have not had access to the information thus collected. The evidence, however, at the disposal of the Commission suffices to show that there is considerable divergence of opinion as to the degree in which the depression of the agricultural classes in parts of India is connected~"with the system of collect- ing the lan_d revenue, and as to how far it would be safe or expedient to modify in any material respect the existing arrange- ments. Moreover, when we come to consider the practical measures suggested, we find that very different degrees of elasti- city are advocated by different persons. Some would make the annual demand vary in the case of individual land-holders or individual villages, according to the estimate made of the harvest reaped in each instance ; some would make it vary uniformly over large tracts according to the general character of the harvest in each tract ; some would limit this variation by fixing absolutely * See pages 127-30 of Report of Indian Famine Commission (1880), Part II. °]- FAMINE COMMISSION ON FIXITY & ELASTICITY OF DEMAND. l8l the amount to be collected in a cycle of years, but permitting a larger or smaller fraction of the total to be demanded in each year, according to the seasonal circumstances of the year ; some would allow a variation based on a consideration of the area cultivated in each year, not of the quality of the crop raised on that area ; some would adhere to the rule of a uniform moderate demand in ordinary years, allowing variations only in the case of almost complete failures in which so great a proportion of the crop is destroyed over a large area that Government is compelled to set on foot measures of relief. « * * jf * 6. With regard to the general question of introducing more elasticity into the demand for the land Objections to elas- revenue, we must also bear in mind that "^' ^' although it has some of the characteristics of rent, as distinguished from taxation, and although the State to some extent stands in the position of landlord to those who pay land revenue, yet this analogy is in the nature of the case but partial. So far as the land revenue partakes of the character of rent, it is wholly impossible that the State, through its officers, can obtain the intimate knowledge of the condition of individual cultivators which is possessed by an ordinary landlord, and nothing but mischief could come of the attempt to regulate State action by the presumption that such knowledge could be obtained. So far again as it is of the nature of ordinary taxation, the collection of the State demand will necessarily be largely governed by the principles which apply to such taxation, and among these certainty and inflexibi- lity are universally recognized as most important. * * * # # II. Where local conditions make the possibility of culti- vating the land unusually precarious, as in Elasticity advocat- jj^g ^^^^ ^f tracts habitually flooded by ed for nveram lands. . . ... u't, f'li..*! nver inundation, which may fail to take place, or be excessive, or may subside too soon or too late for agricultural operations to be carried on, an exceptional proce- dure would appear desirable. We approve the system, suc- cessfully adopted in the Punjab in such cases, of carrying out a yearly rough measurement, according to the results of which a fixed rate of revenue per acre actually cultivated is levied. This plan would probably be found more suitable for Sindh than the Bombay form of settlement now being introduced there, and we think it possible that the application of a similar principle might be beneficial in any exceptionally dry upland tracts, such as exist in some parts of India, where the rainfall is very precarious and frequently insufficient. MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. C ^PP- 12. It has been suggested that, although a system of varying assessment is not generally advis- Cyclical system con- ^^^^^ jj ^^y ^e suitable to the case of *^^'""^'*' tracts of country where the landed class, either from want of thrift or skill in husbandry, or from other causes, are in a condition so depressed as to call for special treatment. The plan.£f_a fixed, assessment, regularly collected, is based on the assumption that the people by whom it is to be paid are^ on the whole, of a sufficiently thrifty and far-sighted character to lay up in good years the means of meeting the de- mand for revenue in years^of less prosperity. But there are populations where such qualities exist, if at all, only in a rudi- mentary form ; and with these the rigid enforcement of the payment of revenue may tend to an indebtedness leading on to complete insolvency. The Government of India not un- frequently is called on to deal with particular districts where indebtedness and insolvency have assumed serious proportions, and where the general condition of the com- munity is so unsatisfactory that it cannot be restored to pros- perity without resort to exceptional measures. It has been sug- gested that the Government in such cases should apply a system of revenue collections so graduated at the discretion of the revenue authorities, with reference to the character of the sea- son, as to produce in the long run a prescribed average, the collections being heaviest in the most prosperous years, and less- ened or altogether remitted in seasons when little or no mar- gin of profit has been yielded by cultivation. Such a system might work beneficially, along with other remedial measures, for the relief of an exceptionally involved or incapable agricul- tural community which has been proved to be unable to main- tain itself without such interposition ; but as it would necessari- ly involve a supervising establishment largely in excess of that ordinarily employed in a district, the expense and other evils attendant on it are such that the experiment would only be justified by very extraordinary circumstances, and as a tem- porary expedient, so long as the community is held to be incompetent. It is questionable, however, whether in such an extreme case it might not be simpler and preferable to revert to the old practice of taking the revenue in kind by partition of the crop. As regards the views enunciated in para. 6, they are, My remarks on ^ think, partly due to want of practical Famine Commis- knowledge of the subject. I have sion s views. ■* answered the objection raised in the last four lines of the para, in page 1 1 5 of this book. As to the ^i- FAMINE COMMISSION ON FIXITY & ELASTICITY OF DEMAND. 1 83 alleged impossibility of a Collector's acquiring sufficient individual acquaintance with the condition of such cultiva- tors, a morning's ride will give an officer all the know- ledge necessary for assessment purposes over the whole of the observed area. Crops do not vary field by field, but circle by circle. As to para, ii, if lands subject to river inundations require a fluctuating system, a fortiori the cultivated area in barani tracts of short and uncertain require it much more. As to para. 12, the "cyclical system" therein indica- ted is impracticable for reasons given at page no. The difficulty of supervision noted by the Famine Commis- sioners no longer exists, as the field establishments have lately been largely increased, as stated at page 113. 1 84 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. fApp. APPENDIX E. EXTRACTS FROM MR. A. P. HOWELL'S PAPER "LEGISLATION IN INDIA," IN THE "CALCUTTA REVIEW" OF APRIL, 1886. In the reported proceedings of the Supreme Council in December, 1866, an instructive speech of Sir H. S. Maine will be found, defending the Council from the charge of excessive legislation, but admitting that " there could hard- ly be any censure too heavy for the Council if it really did legislate with incaution and precipitancy ;" and as regards the introduction of English Law — " one of the most difficult and cumbrous systems in the world"— that it would be a " most intolerable hardship" if 250 millions of people should have their civil rights defined in a system which they cannot understand, and which is contained in records not accessible to them. The point for consideration is, whether instances of incautious and precipitate legislation in India can be pointed to, and whether the people are, indeed, subjected to the.hardship which Sir H. S. Maine denounced. It would be a mockery to ask those who are familiar with the real story of the Ilbert Bill, whether it was not both incautious and precipitate. * * * * * I am content to leave the Ilbert Bill, and to rest the argu- ment on the more solid ground of other instances of the same system. The only difficulty in the selection of in- stances is the emharras duchoix. I will, however, take the Specific Relief_Ac^_ofj877 and the Easements Act_of 1882. It would be hardly an exaggeration to say that until 1877, no one in India, barring barristers trained in England had ever heard of the legal term sp ecific r elief. When Sir Arthur (now Lord) Hobhouse introduce3~*lhe Bill to the best informed audience in the country, so ignorant was the Council of the meaning of even the title of the Bill that he was forced to explain— and the explanation is extant— that the measure had no concern with the relief of the scarcity then prevalent in Madras. Of course, therefore, there could be no discussion for it was a case oi ubi tu pulsas Ego Vaiiilo ^^«^w«, and equally of course the Bill passed, and was de- clared applicable to all British India. Will any one maintain that a measure so passed by a Council which knew nothing about the Bill, and by an introducer who knew nothing about the people, could be justified by any theory of legislation ? I E]- EXTRACTS FROM MR. A. P. HOWELl's PAPER. 1 85 can say from experience in a court of appeal, that after eight years of its operation, many of those who have to administer it are still quite ignorant of its provisions, and that to the great mass of the people it is a dead letter, or, being understood only by the pleaders, opens opportunities of sometimes vexatious litigation. Would not the measure have been far more warrantable had it had any real connec- tion with the relief which its mover disclaimed ; and as it had no such connection, was there not a strange but true analogy between the Council so engaged and the Council of Laputa which busied itself in scientific frivolities, while the people around were dying for food and clothes ? Take the other more recent instance. How many civilians prior to 1882 could have explain ed_the natur e of an easaHJ&nt at any vernacular term for-it ? To this day, such an mquiry, especially among the older civilians, whom the examiner has long ceased from troubling, would elicit curi- ously discrepant answers. In fact, neither the title of the Act nor its chief provisions can be translated into any vernacular, without an adaptation of English terms analogous to the pigeon English of the Chinese sea-board. No executive officer ever dreamt of proposing such a measure. On the contrary, one Lieutenant-Governor seriously replied, when asked what number of troops were required for the protec- tion of his dominions, that if the Legislative Department con- tinued to harass the people with such Acts, he must recoa- sider his requirements. Objections j3Ltliis..type, ofxourse, failed to stoD^he.tQrrQj3j^of l^egislatipn at_the fountain-head, but th^ rocalGovernments, grown wary by experience, still managed at the last moment to divert its course. One after another of them declared that however excellent the Act might be in the abstract, the}' individually did not want it, and so the operation of the Act was accepted only by the more courtly representatives of Madras and the Central Provinces — notoriously the most backward parts of the Empire— and for the tiny community of Coorg, which by a curious anomaly is still directly subordinate to the Govern- ment at Calcutta. The restriction is a significant comment of the necessity of the Act at all. It is not required by the European community at Bombay or Calcutta, or by the highly intelligent natives there resident — the Parsis or Bengalis— but it is enforced among the rude Gonds and Bhils of Central India, and among a fraction of the wild mountaineers of the Southern Peninsula. Will it be main- tained that the Indian Councils Act contemplated measures being passed In advance of requirements, and then being l86 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [ APP- rejected like misfits at a ready-made store ? What would be thought of an English Act passed for Great Britain and Ireland, and then limited to the crofters of Skye? The ana- logy fails to show the anomaly of what has been done in India, because in no part of Great Britain can any commu- nity be found so low in the scale of civilization as in the Cen- tral Provinces of India. I know of whole villages where the current vernacular has no written character ; where there is no currency, and all the resources of the village cannot raise change for a rupee ; where men and women, on their rare appearance in court, are addressed even by natives through an interpreter, and are sworn by " the black dog;" where, on the occasion of an epidemic, the collective wisdom of the community -will seize on an old woman supposed to be connected with the visitation, and will pound her to death in a tank. Such are some of the Gonds who are counted by hundreds of thousands. They are mostly agri- culturists of the roughest type ; and if one of them now finds closed the familiar pathway to his immemorial field, he must be told in English, which he cannot of course understand— and yet he can be told in no other tongue — that he must sue the dominant owner for a release of the servient heritage under Chapters IV and V of the Easements Act. The simple savage will reply that he is a poor man, and knows nothing of easements, and cannot afford a plea- der. He must then be informed that such is the law, and that it is one of the merits of our system that the law is the same for rich and poor alike. Can it be maintained that the Easenaents Act, -any more, than the Specific Relief Act, finds any warrant in the constitutjonal_scheme of Indian legislation, or that the £^a£sin^ of flTemisjnot clearly amen- able to Sir H. S. Maine's censure ? Nor is this all. The large importation of technical law necessarily displaces a more than proportionate amount of na- tive custom. If the excellence of a legal system can be gaug- ed by the absence of lawyers, as the healthiness of a loca- ity by the absence of doctors, native custom in respect of leases, mortgages, and common agreements had at least the merit of serving its own purpose. ' Until recently the agri- cultural communities of India, that is, the great bulk of the population, have been in the habit of managing their own affairs in their own way. The barrister and Jhe pleader are of our recent creaition ; while, except in the Presidency towns there are-'even yet no solicitors or conveyancers, barristers and pleaders, dealing with litigants direct. In England no sane man thinks of touching a mortgage or even a lease or ^3- EXTRACTS FROM MR. A. P. HOWELL's PAPEB. iS? common agreement without a lawyer at his elbow, and the unwisdom of being one's own lawyer has passed into a pro- verb. In India the money lenders, that is most well-to-do agri- culturists, have been in the habit of drawing up all their own legal documents, rudely no doubt, but still so as to be a fair guide to the mutual intentions of the parties. JLdisEiites arose, native custom all over Indj ^ lyould settle them che ap- ly and exp editiously b y a system ot arbitration (pun- chayet^-strSxcellent as to beTecoghised in -those- Acts whose tendency it is to abolish arbitration. But now, as our laws are rapidly becoming unintelligible to all but profession- al lawyerst-arnd as the professional lawyer class is largely on the increase in wealth and numbers, a standard of legal skill and knowledge is being introduced, which bears very hardly ugon those.jvhodo not_c^me up to itThemselves, and cannot afford to hire Ft. The' orfffnary native' can no longer manage his own affairs. It must be borne in mind, too, that the very large majority of Indian Judges are not trained lawyers, are not lawyers in any sense, and that many of them are besides over-burdened with executive duty. The result is, that the executive work, in which the great body of the people is most interested, is hurried over in order that the amateur Judge may find time to elaborate something in faint resemblance to a professional judgment, as this part of his work may come before his superiors in appeal, and stand on record against him. The professional Bar which makes a business of the study of the law, is stronger than the amateur Bench, and this is the secret of the enormous fees which litigants in a very poor country still find it worth their while to pay for legal assistance. Over and over again I have heard nafi-i/ps^^sa^yJJTaj^^man hag Jjggrr^rnmrigfr^ri or lost his case, not Jaecajias.Jie _was _gjiilt^ or Iiad the, worse case, but because he had-no^-bArrister to-app^axJorJiioj^ I am far from under-valuing the immense advantage which a Judge derives from a well-informed Bar, but I still hold that the causes which have suddenly placed so high a premium on the legal jrQfefisiaa-ga-Jndia, area-gi^alJiaidship to the masses, amd'especially to thepoor, and that the multiplicatjpn of the pleader class 'and the ousting oflth.e-oldj.ajifi:i)older class, -are great politicar evils. The growth of the Bar and the increase at ttti gallon are constantly held up in annual reports as gratifying evidence of an advance in legal efficien- cy and increased confidence in our courts. As well, I ven- ture to think, might we look upon the multiplication of doctors and undertakers, and the increase of pawn-brokers' tickets as satisfactory proofs of increased professional or commercial activity. MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [ App. The multiplication of English barristers and English- speaking pleaders, and still more the predominance of the barrister-element in the highest courts of appeal, naturally tends to leaven the whole Bench with English law. Our Judges, even in the lower grades, are beginning to plume themselves on citing English case law and text books — often to the neglect of that accuracy in the statement of facts on which most decisions really turn. Where a Judge would have been content, a few years ago, to satisfy his own sense of the merits of a case, he must now satisfy his ambition to show that he also can cite English ruling and precedent. In a recent case of some importance, I was encountered by a ruling taken from a decision of Sir G. Jessel, uttered without any reference to India, and yet made the basis of a decision in an Indian appeal. As our courts of first instance have no access to such decisions, it seems to me to be productive of hardship and uncertainty, that a suitor at the last stage of his case may find himself worsted by a ruling taken from a source which he could not foresee. ***** It will, perhaps, be objected that the Acts to which exception has been taken are a portion of the work of the Indian Law Commission, which, as a body appointed in England and working in England, is not amenable to an order of the Indian Government. I would ask the objector whether that Commission has any, and what, authority to override the Indian Councils Act, and whether the orders of 1873 did not express the spirit ard letter of that Act ? How and when the Indian Law Com- mission was appointed, with what objects, for what period, and at what cost, are some of the many things not generally known, and might in these days of extreme financial pre^sute well come under reconsideration ; for, if there is one luxury of administration with which, more than another, the whole Indian public would most readily dispense, it is the costly superfluity of technical law. Ruffles fog. the shirtless are in no sense more anomalous than "€asements for Bhils and Gonds and savages of the same calibre. A more valid ob- jection might be raised on the ground that the legislative needs of a great Empire are not to be measured by the capacity of its administrators of the day ; that the object of the Government has been to bring the law up to the level of the English standard of completeness ; that a system of scientific law is one of the best and most rapid educators of the people ; and that if portions of the Empire are back- ward, that IS no reason why all, including the more E]- EXTRACTS FROM MR. A. P. HOWELl's PAPER. 1 89 advanced, should not share in the great boon of a scientific legal system, adapted from the best sources to the circum- stances of India. This objection, besides assuming a great deal, raises the question of the theory of legislation as to which I can only hope here to invite discussion. Is it the case, I would ask, that the theory prop ounded bv B entham is obsolet e — t hat all__ l egislation is an eyiL—Oiilv warranjtable when th~e "legislator is assured of the existence of an evil capalffe "of correction, and that his legjalatiaa will correct it ? Tried by this standard, full warrant may be found for our Penal and Procedure Codes, the Evidence and Stamp Acts, and for other general Acts of the same class, as also for special enactments designed for local or temporary objects. But surely measures of this character differ from those which define or create altogether new rights and new penalties. In the large majority of Acts of the latter class there is no mention of the existence of an evil to be reme- died, and no pretence that the measure in hand will remedy it. The usual Statement of Objects and Reasons which accompanies an Act, is restricted to the enumeration of the sources from which the Act is taken, and of the legislator's personal acquaintance with those sources. Legislation so originating fails altogether to be the prescription and the remedy which Bentham contemplated. The legislator of the present Indian type inflicts his prescription upon millions of the human race, not because they want it, or will be the better for it, but because he has, or thinks he has, a vast knowledge of prescriptions. Would any one, who could help it, consent to be so doctored in the gross, without regard to his symptoms, and can any theory of legislation justify the imposition of Procrustean Acts not originating in the cir- cumstances of the people, but requiring those circumstances to conform, as best they can, to some arbitrary standard ? I offer no opinion on the abstract merits of any of the Acts cited or referred to. They are the work of extremely able men in their own speciality, and their drafting is no doubt faultless from their own point of view. But legislation in the abstract does not sieem^withintjie scope of practicaTpoliTics. It is ceFfain that there are millions v/ho do not want such Acts at all, and whose lives would be easier without them. It is too often forgotten that the Indian Empire is a bundle of nationalities, differing as the Esquimaux from the Nea- politan. Hence, in reply to the common inquiry what " the natives " think of this or that measure, or of this or that man, the only safe answer is, that millions never heard of the one or the other, and that of the rest some think one thing and some another. If English statesmen find it no I go MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS, [App. easy task to contrive an Act for Ireland, or any single sec- tion of Great Britain, what would be the difficulty of a measure intended for application to all Europe ? And yet Indian legislation jauntily applies Act after Act " to all British India." As the limit of necessary general Acts has long since been reached in India, it would seem that hence- forth the Legislature should be content with the humbler task of watching the laws actually in force, simplifying their operation, remedying real evils discovered in practice, eliminating some uniformity from the decisions of the Privy Council and the concurrent High Courts, and still more — with the best of all legislation — the repeal of previous legislation. It must be remembered that the oriental mind is strictly conservative, and does nof share in that admira- tion for reforifi wliich characterizes the West. A recent Governor, On -the occasion of the opening of an Industrial Exhibition— then a novelty — asked a native of the old school whether he was not pleased at the probable development of local resources. " My Lord," said the old man, with uplifted hands, " first the cyclone came and then th? Exhibition, we poor people are being ruined." In the early days of the Empire the people suffered from the rapacity of new arrivals, each requiring to be satisfied. The rapacity has long since ceased, but the suffering remains, and will remain, if each new arrival to power is permitted to let loose his own packet of specialities, scientific or benevolent. Sir A. Hobhouse threw in .Specific Relief, Mr. Stokes Easements, and there are ominous rumours that Mr. Ilbert will consider his term of office unworthy of his distinguished predecessors if he does not bequeath us an imperial system of " Torts." I have no hesitation in saying that the people at large do not require any information about torts. P]- EXTRACT FROM A JUDGMENT BY THE N.-W. P. HIGH COURT. I9I APPENDIX F. EXTRACT FROM A JUDGMENT BY THE HIGH COURT, N.-W. P., WITH COMMENTS THEREON IN AN EDITORIAL NOTE IN THE "PIONEER,"' DATED 30TH JULY, 1886. The editorial note is as follows : — The attention of Judicial Officers will be willingly given to the important judgment of the Allahabad High Court, given elsewhere in our Law Report to-day. The case in question was only a flagrant instance of a familiar evil, which every- one recognises and reprobates, but which the law courts too often do not see their way to check— the ruin of an agricul- turist by the extortions of a usurer. In 1875 a ryot in the Jalaun district was found owing the suin of Rs. 97 to a pro- fessional money-lender. In order to renew he executed a mortgage-deed, agreeing to pay. — though he was giving land- ed security — 24 per cent, per annum on this Rs. 97, with compound interest in default of payment. He also agreed to pay a fine of one anna per rupee on the Rs. 97, to be added yearly to the amount bearing interest thereafter ; 01 if he did not pay the interest regularly, it was to be calcu- lated on the Rs. 97," plus interest or compound interest, and then added. The effect of these conditions was, tliai-io-tan years t he Rs. 97 had svyollen into Rs. 873, and when the unhappy borrower brought ttie case mto^'hfe Assistant Com- missioner's court, his suit was dismissed with costs, making him liable in all for Rs. 1,00^ . Had the decree been upheld, he would, of course, ha-^fe been Bold up, and whilehis paternal acres passed into the hands of the money-lender, he himself would probably have begun life afresh as a farm servant of the man who had supplanted him. The process is one which we see going on every day around us, and everyone is familiar with the special attempts which the Indian Legislature has made to counteract it. Fortunately the High Court have not felt bound to give the sanction of the law to oppression and fraud. The elaborate judgment of Mr. Justice Mahmood and the forcible language of Mr. Justice Straight speak for themselves. It is hardly neces- sary to say that it will be acceptable to all who have the interests of the country at heart to find the law harmonis- ing so thoroughly with our natural ideas of justice. The hands of the lower courts should after this be strengthened 102 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. [App. to deal with the multitudinous cases where advantage is taken of the ignorance and helplessness of the people to wring from them terms iniquitously unjust, but often enforc- ed through thick and thin in virtue of a belief — as it now appears an exaggerated belief — in the sanctity of contract. As to the judgment itself, it is only necessary to quote here the concluding remarks of Mr. Justice Mahmood. # # * * # " I wish to add that I have considered it my duty to deliver such an elaborate judgment in this case because I am aware that a general notion prevails in the Mofussil that, ever since the repeal of the usury laws, the Courts of Justice are bound to enforce contracts as to interest, regardless of the circumstances of the case or the relative conditions of the parties, and irrespective of the unconscionableness of the bargain. Courts of Justice in India exercise the mixed jurisdiction of the Courts of Law and Equity, and, in the exercise of that jurisdiction, whil st bo und to respect the integrity of. private contracts, they musTnot forget th'afcases which'furnish adequate grounds for equitable interference mustiDe so. dealt with, not 'because such a course involves theleast contravention of the law, but because by reason of undue advantage having been taken of the weak and the ignorant, the contract itself is tainted with fraud in the broad sense in which that term is understoodTiTThe Courts of Equity in England and in America — a remark which seems to me fully justifiezTBy^tireTuTe of justice, equity, and good conscience, which we are bound to administer in such cases. For these reasons I do not think that this is a case in which we should interfere, and I would dismiss this appeal with costs." In concurring with his brother Mahmood, the Chief Justice, after quoting from various leading cases by the Court of Chancery, continued as follows : I draw particular attention to the lines I have had printed in italics. " I gather therefore, according to the rule of equity laid down by Lord Hardwicke, that equitable relief of the kind described by him may be extended to the cases of ' persons under pressure without adequate protection,' or to transac tions with ' uneducated ignorant persons,' and that it lies upon him who seeks to fix them with a liability which upon the tace of it, appears unconscionable, to establish that the contract out of which it arises was 'fair, just, and reasonable • ■'']• EXTRACT FROM A JUDGMENT BY THE N.-W. P. HIGH COURT. 1 93 Now what is the state of things here ? The plaintiff, an un- educated ignorant countryman of one of the most rural dis- tricts within our jurisdiction, found himself unable to pay Rs. 97 to his creditor. The creditor, an astute Brahman money- lender, knowing that, in their relative positions one to the other, he can dictate almost any terms, proceeds to put for- ward the agreement, the onerous conditions of which I have explained at the outset of my judgment. It is obvious that, in reality, the debtor had little or no choice but to accept them, and that, much in the same way as a young spendthrift will give his promissory note for a large amount so long as he gets a small sum of present cash, the plaintiff in his case was willing to consent to any proposal to escape from his imme- diate embarrassment. It is equally clear to my mind that the object the defendant had in view, knowing the plaintiff's pecuniary capabilities, was to put him under such terms that unless he obtained funds from foreign sources he would never be able to redeem his share, and it would thus inevitably fall into his hands. " It is bargains of this description between the small village proprietors and the money-lenders that are gradually worhing the extinction of the former class in many of the country districts, and producing results which are not only a serious scandal, but a positive mischief. For it is to be borne in mind that the pecuniary difficulties of the persons I have mentioned are as often as not the result of misfor- tune rather than improvidence, and that bad seasons have as much to do with causing them as waste or extravagance. Whichever way it be, this is certain, that the money-lenders, as anyone who sits in this court must see, are to an alarming extent absorbing proprietary in- terests in the village communities, and that the body of ex-proprietors is enormously on the decrease. It is, of course, not my business here to discuss the policy that should govern the action of the State in dealing with this state of things ; but as a Judge having power to enforce equitable principles, I am resolutely determined, until I am set right by higher authority, to give effect, in cases of this kind, to the principle propounded by the eminent lawyers to whose utterances I have referred, and to see that justice is done. It may be said that the repeal of the usury laws prohibits me from adopting the course I propose to take. As to this, it is enough to say that Lord Selbourne, Lord Hatherley, and Sir George Jessel, in the judgments to which I have adverted, remarked in the clearest and most emphatic language that the repeal of the usury laws in England had in no way touched or affected the power claimed by the Court of Chancery to grant relief in such matters. I entirely concur in and approve the order proposed by my brother Mahmood." A I 194 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. { App. That a converging fire of legal big guns of English, American, and Indian manufacture, was found necessary to coerce /ra«^ into " the inequitable" was, some will think, a ridiculous exercise of force. The case itself was simple enough. A needy cultivator being unable to borrow money except at high interest, deliberately agrees to the lender's terms, and executes a formal mortgage-deed, which satisfies all the requirements of the law. For ten years the debtor staves off the day of reckoning, and when it comes, is heart- broken to find that a debt of Rs. 97 has grown into one of Rs. 873. The Assistant Commissioner found that "the evidence shows that Ram Pershad was quite aware of the clauses in the deed relating to interest and penalty ; and since the terms of the deed have been acted up to, it may reasonably be presumed his declaration of ignorance is false." Under the facts found, the Assistant Commissioner (court of first ins- tance) acted in strict conformity with the law in decreeing the claim in full. When the case reached the Allahabad High Court, that court sympathised with the debtor, and being unable to circumvent the law of contract in any other way, stretched fraud into covering a meaning of inequitable, and so wiped out more than half the sum the debtor was otherwise legally bound to pay. The ruling will, in effect, enable Judges to set aside the terms of any "inequitable" contract, no matter how secured by any formal execution and registration. The ruling will, I fear, have little influence, as almost all the original civil litigation of the Province is disposed of by native Judges, who will certainly prefer to be guided by the Contract, Specific Relief, Evidence, Stamp, and Registration Acts, none of which are designed to save fools from the consequences^ their own*^foriy. ~in'' being so""guia"ed, 196 MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. C App. APPENDIX G. SUGGESTIONS FOR AN INSOLVENCY LAW FOR RURAL INDIA. In a paper I submitted to Government on agricul- tural indebtedness in June, 1884, I wrote as follows on the amendment of Chapter XX of the Civil Procedure Code, which contains the existing insolvency law, and sug- gested the passing of an Act to comprise, inter alia, the following provisions : — (a) requiring courts to discharge judgment-debtors owing Rs. 50 or less, when hereditary agriculturists, at once on payment of as much as the court thinks they can pay — see Section- 19, Deccan Ryots] Act ; also Section 358 of the Civil Procedure Code ; (h) legalising a declaration of insolvency in favor of hereditary agriculturists owing Rs 50 or upwards, upon their simple application and proof of indebtedness, and enab- ling the Collector to receive and manage as much of their immoveable property as is not required for the support of the insolvent and of his family for the benefit of the credi- tors, for a period not exceeding Hyears— (see Sections 25-29, Deccan Ryots Act). " The existing insolvency rules contained in Chapter XX of the Civil Procedure Code are, I think, faulty and inequitably harsh, because — (i) none but a judgment-debtor can benefit by them ; (2) when the debts are over Rs. 200, the discharge IS not a discharge in full, all property subsequently acquired bemg liable to attachment and sale for 12 years ; u i^? r"?u P''°Pe/'y is exempted from disposal for the benefit of the creditors, and so the insolvent and his family are stripped and left destitute. ^ fi A The unpopularity of the law as it stands is exempli- fff 'V?' fi/^'^r^^V'" 1882 only 283 persons applied for Its .benefit throughout the Province (see Statement No. 7, Civil Report 1882 . Persons would almost daily file sche dues of their debts before me, and seek an aLngement with their creditors by temporary alienation of their lands, G]- SUGGESTIONS FOR AN INSOLVENCY LAW FOR RURAL INDIA. I97 but that in very few cases I am able to help them. As the creditors are often enjoying a share of each harvest as interest, they prefer not to sue their debtors. I have tried various expedients in order to settle debtors' outstandings, but only in a few cases have I succeeded. I have summoned the creditors and used pressure to make them come to terms. I have repeatedly urged the debtor to get a decree passed against himself, and arranged to leave him enough to save him and his family from starvation when declaring him an insolvent. I am endeavouring to arrange several heavy cases now : but the creditors know the advantages the law gives them, and I find it very difficult to settle fair terms with them. I have at present throughout the district, but chiefly in the Dera and Leiah tahsils, 274 lambardars, owing, in the aggregate, Rs. 5,81,157, whose debts I could easily arrange were a liberal insolvency law passed. Until it is passed, debtors from very hopelessness are precluded from any honorable exertion to free themselves. Many of their debts are inherited, and a large percentage have been liquidated over and over again in interest alone. Many are due to former over assessment, or former rigidity of assess- ment, particularly in the Indus tracts of the Leiah tahsil." [ App. H. igg MUSALMANS AND MONEY-LENDERS. APPENDIX H. * RULES IN THE MATTER OF ATTACHMENT OF AGRICUL- TURAL PRODUCE IN DECREES FOR DEBT IN THE KAPURTHALA STATE. Attachment of the produce of the land or of cattle in execution of decreeagainst an agriculturist shall only be granted at harvest time. 2. At harvest time the court may attach — (a). Any surplus produce of former harvests belong- ing to the judgment-debtor. (b). Surplus cattle not necessary for tilling the ground. (c). A fixed share of the produce of the current harvest. 3. The fixed share mentioned in the previous rule shall not exceed — (a). From owners and tenants who pay revenue or rent in cash, two-thirds of the grain and one-third of the straw in ordinary crops and three-fourths of rabi crops : provided that the judgment-creditor pays into court the whole of the revenue or rent charges due on the crop. (6). From tenants who pay rent in kind, one-half of the tenant's share of the grain in ordinary crops and three- fifths of the tenant's share in rabi crops. 4. Sums paid into court as revenue under the pre- vious rule shall be credited to the State on account of the crops to which they relate in the judgment-debtor's behalf, and the court shall give notice of such payments to the Collector, who shall give such directions concerning them as he shall see fit. 5. Sums paid into court under Rule 3 as rent charges shall be made over to the judgment-debtor so soon as the report of the attachment of the produce has been received from the attaching officer. * Accompaniments to Punjab Government printed letter No. 459 S., dated 17th September, 1880.