56 THE COMPETITION FOR LAND 



amount of honesty and liberality, and where thorough 

 supervision is maintained over the underlings or 

 middlemen through whom they are made, or better 

 still, where the principal in a spirit of fair dealing- 

 makes them himself, the system of grain rentals may 

 be unexceptionable ; indeed, in certain tracts and 

 among certain classes of tenantry it may be the best. 

 But nothing can be more demoralizing to a people, 

 industrious and thrifty by nature, than such a system 

 badly managed ; or worse still, worked with the sole 

 object of extorting as much as can be squeezed from 

 the tenants. 



* Now, my experience leaves me no doubt that the 

 custom of grain rents has been much abused in 

 Amroha. In the ancestral Syed estates I found un- 

 mistakable evidence of long-standing abuses. As 

 remarked in a former part of this report, the Syeds 

 look upon the land as their absolute property, and 

 seem to consider themselves entitled to its whole pro- 

 duce, barring only a share sufficient to feed the tillers 

 of the soil. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that 

 they ignore any rights in land save their own, and 

 that, consequently, they refuse to recognise any claim 

 by a tenant to profit. Everything above and beyond 

 the bare food of the cultivator is, in their opinion, 

 theirs by right. Their practice has been all along and 

 still is in strict accord with this theory. They pay 

 but little regard to the convenience of the tenantry at 

 harvest-time. The grain is not unfrequently allowed 

 to lie for days and weeks on the threshing-floor, not- 

 withstanding the earnest entreaties of the cultivators 

 to have the division made. When, after much dun- 

 ning, the landlord consents, the village is beset with a 

 horde of underlings. These men, with their servants 

 and bullocks, live in the village till the last grain of 

 the harvest is duly accounted for, and are not in a 

 hurry to depart. When the division has been com- 

 pleted, the tenant generally finds a much larger hole 



