tAND TENURES IN THE PANJAB 59 



Maine and others was stimulated among English officials by the abundant 

 evidence of their sur\nval in India, and it became clear that ownership 

 in the English sense, involving as it does free power of disposition, was 

 wholly alien to the ideas of the Panjab peasant. This truth became appa- 

 rent to the Chief Court of the province, and from 1887 onwards it formed 

 the foundation of a series of decisions on sales and mortgages by sonless 

 proprietors, adoption, gifts, and pre-emption. It was well that the courts 

 should at last have put themselves in line with facts. But by the time they 

 did so the process of disintegration had gone too far to be cured by correct 

 expositions of village custom, and it had become increasingly evident that 

 the evil must be cured, if cured at all, by legislation. 



The remedy adopted after long discussion is embodied in the Panjab 

 Land Alienation Act of 1900, which imposed ver}^ drastic restraints on land 

 transfers. If gave the State power to declare by notification what tribes 

 in each district were " agricultural ". It forbade any member of an agri- 

 cultural tribe to sell land to a non-agriculturist without the sanction of the 

 officer in charge of the district, the intention being that sanction should 

 onl}^ be given in exceptional circumstances. The usual form of Panjab 

 mortgage, bj^ which the mortgagee took the landlord's share of the pro- 

 duce instead of interest, and assumed all the rights and liabilities of the 

 landowner till the principal was repaid, was made illegal in the case of land 

 mortgaged by a member of an agricultural trjbe to a non-agriculturist. 

 Other forms existed which were still more burdensome to the mortgager. 

 These also disappeared. Certain statutorj^ forms were substituted, the 

 only one of any practical importance being a mortgage for a limited 

 period not exceeding twenty years, all the rights of the mortgager being 

 suspended, and the rents and profits enjoyed by the mortgage being taken 

 as extinguishing by the end of the term his claim for both principal and 

 interest. Sales of agricultural land in execution of decree, which had always 

 been subject to severe restrictions in the Panjab, were absolutely for- 

 bidden as regarded land owned by members of agricultural tribes. It may 

 be noted in passing that under the Civil Procedure Code the following kinds 

 of property belonging to an agriculturist are exempt from attachment 

 {a) implements of husbandr}-, 



(/;) the cattle and seed grain necessar^^ for him to earn his livelihood, 

 (c) the house and other buildings which he owns or occupies. 

 For the present the Government has with rare exceptions treated 

 all scheduled agricultural tribes in a district as a single group, and has 

 permitted a man of one such tribe to sell or mortgage without restraint to 

 a man of another. But it holds in reserv^e the power to treat each tribe 

 as a group by itself and still further to limit freedom of transfer. The 

 exercise of this power may in some cases become necessary, e. g. if one 

 agricultural tribe should develop to a serious extent landgrabbing 

 tendencies, and the result be rapid disappropriation of economically 

 weaker tribes. 



It will be obser\^ed that the motives of this legislation were political 

 and economic. No direct attempt was made to re-establish the " family " 

 holding as the unit of the village communities. But a strong barrier was 



