Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/68

 INTRODUCTION.

Iviii

The blue-book which contained the results of the inquiry proved two things that the landowners did constantly evict tenants during the nawabi, and' that rents were fixed by custom and not

—

but ifc is doubtful whether the real relations which subsisted between the cultivator and the raja were as well understood then as they are now. There was no legislative interference with the position of tenants without special rights till the Kent Act of 1868, which established competition as the sole basis

by competition



of their relations with their landlords, legalized eviction while it prescribed the procedure and restrictions under which it was to be enforced, and secured compensation for improvements made at the tenant's own cost. It had been seen from the first that the realization of the revenue would be impossible unless all the various and conflicting interests in the soil were clearly defined, and the officers who were appointed to make the assessment were constituted civil courts for their adjudication and embodiment in a complete record After long and bitter litigation, that task has now of rights. been nearly accomplished, and it is possible to form an approximately accurate idea of the distribution of the land of the province among the various classes holding recognized rights in it. The units of property are, as has been stated above, the villages, of which the country contains 25,842, with an average area of a little less than a square mile each. Of these, 15,553 are

among 410 properties, which pay an annual revenue to Government of upwards of £500 each the remaining 10,290 are held by 6,950 village communities. So, roughly speaking, the divided



the old chieftains have retained three-fifths of the province ; twofifths have escaped them altogether, and belong to the classes intermediate between them and the cultivator. The returns of tenures are not quite complete, but they are sufficiently so to prove that rather more than a tenth of the 625,000 tenants of the province hold on decree an area amounting to a third of the whole cultivation, and enjoy proprietary privileges against the landowners who are responsible for the Government revenue. The size of the ordinary farm held by single cultivators without rights is about four acres. The village communities are generally large coparcenary societies, containing each a number of separate properties, who either hold the lands in common, dividing what escapes of the rents when all charges have been paid ; or have divided all the lands, and collect and defray, each of them separately, the rents and charges on their divided share of the property ; or hold some