REPORT ON THE FORESTS OF INDIA. 213 



XXIV. Report on the Forests of India. By C. F. Amery, Forest 

 Department, North- West Provinces, India. 



I. — State Rights in Indian Forests. 



The measure of control which a State can exercise over its forests 

 is necessarily limited by the measure of rights of individuals or 

 communities in those forests. 



In India the general existence of such private rights is admitted, 

 and legislation has now been set on foot by the Supreme Govern- 

 ment to give permissive authority to local governments to investi- 

 gate into all claims, and define for all time, the status, which, after 

 due inquiry, they may hold it compulsory or expedient to award. 

 The bill provides further for the commutation of admitted rights, 

 but it makes no attempt to define the nature of the evidence 

 which may be accepted as constituting a right, nor does it pre- 

 scribe any data for the valuation of rights which it may be deemed 

 expedient to commute. 



The Supreme Government appears too fully impressed with the 

 involved nature of these claims to prescribe any arbitrary method 

 of dealing with them ; and indeed the whole question of forest 

 rights in India is beset with so many difficulties, that they can 

 only be understood by a review of the position of the people of 

 the country towards their native rulers, in respect of the land at 

 a period anterior to the assumption of authority by the East India 

 Company. 



In the theoretical question as to whether the people at large 

 were the proprietors of their several holdings, or whether the 

 State was the universal landlord, speculation loses itself. Village 

 communities divided the fields among themselves according to 

 prescribed custom, and the State claimed its moiety (often a half) 

 of the produce of each field, which was commonly paid in kind, 

 but the right of ousting the cultivators — the crucial test of pro- 

 prietary right — was never tested, because the culturable area was 

 always vastly in excess of the cultivators — unoccupied land was 

 valueless ; and the State or middleman would as little have 

 thought of ousting the cultivator, as the latter of ousting his 

 bullocks. But whatever difference of opinion may prevail as to 

 the status of the ryot or cultivator in respect of his holding, there 

 can be none as to the middlemen. The jagheerdar held the free 



