Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/66

 Ivi

INTRODUCTION.

intact to the present day, was to preserve the status of the various classes at annexation. The taluqdars as they gave in their adhesion were invested with all the villages they had held in the last

main

year of native rule, and the lists they furnished were confirmed Soon after the after a summary inspection by the local officers. arrangement was ratified by the Governor-General, who engaged that their titles should be protected from all question subject to the maintenance of any subordinate rights which might be proved against them. The interference of the civil courts was precluded by a proclamation which declared the whole land of the province confiscate for rebellion and free to be disposed of by Government as it thought fit, and they were further secured by sanads in which

Governmentexpresslyconveyedtoeachof them separately the lands they had claimed as their own. Mortgage by the village zamindari communities was one of the many forms under which the villages had been attached to the chieftains' engagement, and it was subsequently enacted that the terms of the Governor-General's grant did not prevent the redemption of such mortgages if executed within a specified period of limitation. But though a few villages have passed out of their estates under this rule, it has not materially afi'ected their position. Finally, their legal status was clearly set forth, and the principles by which the devolution of their properties was to be governed determined by Act (Act I. of 1869.) The next class to be dealt with were the middlemen between the chief and the cultivator, to whom the name of zamindar has been appropriated in Oudh, Those who had engaged direct with Government previous to annexation were maintained in their position, and enrolled as landowners responsible for the revenue of their several villages. The remainder, whose properties formed the units out of which the greater part of the taluqas had been made up, were at first held entitled, under the reservation of subordinate rights made when the sanads were issued, to such rights and such only as they could prove themselves to have possessed in the last year of native rule, the object being to reproduce as exactly as possible the proprietary status of the various orders at the moment when we took over the country. The sanads had originally done these men a great injury by creating a presumption of full proprietary title in favour of their over-lord and throwing on them the whole burden of the proof that their subordinate rights were in existence. The taluqdar's title had been accepted on his mere Word after what was often a nominal scrutiny theirs had to go through the ordeal of a civil court. It was soon found that to restrict