RESTRICTIONS OF THE ALIENATION OF LANDS, 193 



The Government of India, in forwarding this Commission's Report 

 to the Secretary of State in 1894, together with a draft Bill to 

 provide for the relief of the agricultural classes, in which certain 

 changes proposed by the Commission in the Deccan Act had been 

 incorporated, remarked that such legislation would, however, 

 only partially meet the difficulties connected with the general 

 problem of agricultural indebtedness j that remedies of an entirely 

 different kind, including measures for further restricting the right 



* O O O 



of land transfer seemed indispensable ; and that this part of the 

 subject would be separately and carefully considered. 



Accordingly, a Circular was addressed to Local Governments 

 in October, 1895, in which it was said that the Government of 

 India were distinctly of opinion that some action in the direction 

 of restriction upon the alienability of land was generally advisable, 

 and even necessary, though the manner and degree of the restriction 

 must vary from province to province. Each Local Government 

 and Administration was requested to take the subject into its most 

 careful consideration, and to communicate its matured views and 

 definite proposals for action in the direction indicated. Two 

 Notes accompanied the Circular, in which the whole subject of 

 agricultural indebtedness in India and the various possible remedies 

 for checking transfers of land were exhaustively explained and 

 discussed. 



On receipt of the replies to this Circular, it was decided to 

 deal first with the Punjab, as being the Province where the 

 question of agricultural indebtedness was of special importance 

 in its political aspect, and where it was probably possible to go 

 further than elsewhere in respect of imposing direct restrictions 

 on land transfers. The reply from the Punjab had been to the 

 following effect : 'The Lieutenant-Governor, SIR DENNIS FITZ- 

 PATRICK, recognized that a point might be reached at which the 

 amount of land alienated, and the number of proprietors reduced to 

 the condition of tenants or labourers, would constitute a political 

 danger of formidable dimensions, and that where this danger point 

 was reached, the only remedy was to attack the evil at the root by 

 imposing direct restrictions on alienation for instance, by prohibit- 

 ing land-owners of specified castes or tribes from alienating their 

 ancestral lands, without official sanction, beyond their life-time 

 or for a fixed period, to any ? person not belonging to those castes 



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