Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History

The complex socio-political and economic structure of life on the Indian subcontinent has been confused by centuries of accretion in overlapping terminology. It has been further distorted by persistent Western attempts to reduce it to Western frames of reference. Above all, the Western concept of land ownership as a permanent and legally recorded holding of specified pieces of real estate as property has been quite alien to India. In Indian, ability to hold, possess or rule a piece of land or territory, including its inhabitants, or at least a share of its produce, was traditionally determined by ones family or caste status, and by holding actual political power, without which no one could expect to retain possession for long. Security in the holding or tenure of land in India, therefore, has been more immediately political than in the West and has depended largely upon status and power. In this volume, whose first edition won wide scholarly acclaim in India, nine distinguished Indian historians re-examine what is perhaps the central problem throughout Indias history. In a general introduction, Dr frykenberg points out some of the broader aspects of the relations between land control and social structure. This is followed by a theoretical examination of the meaning of the concept of land in an Indian milieu. Also included are essays on more specific themes: the Zamindars under the Mughals; the disruption of land-holding under the British; the fate of the dispossessed; the transformation of local rajas into landlords in oudh; the permanent settlement in operation in a Bengal district; the integration of agrarian life in South India; The ryotwari system in the Madras presidency and the endurance and tenacity of village influences within South India from regime to regime. Specially new in this edition is an essay about persistent historical tendencies leading to structural disintegration entitled traditional processes of power in South India.