TRADITIONAL RIGHTS OF THE TENANT 63 



English officers who carried forward Colebrooke's 

 views gradually put away their English preposses- 

 sions and accepted the Indian view of a dual owner- 

 ship of land. They argued that the tenant in India 

 had a beneficial interest in the land which, before the 

 establishment of British rule had been generally re- 

 spected, and that it was now the duty of Government 

 to give statutory recognition to these vague but indu- 

 bitable rights. 



This was accomplished in the course of the nine- 

 teenth century, but it is only fair to recognise that 

 these enactments were innovations in Indian law. 

 Although sub-proprietary rights were generally recog- 

 nised, and were part of the tradition which governed 

 the village, it cannot be maintained that the position 

 of the tenants had ever been legally defined before the 

 days of British rule. * It is simply impossible to point 

 to any time when there was any law that a tenant 

 (whether under a person practically the landlord, or 

 under the State regarded as landlord) could not be 

 ejected or have his rent raised so that he could not 

 afford to keep the land ; there was, no doubt, a certain 

 popular feeling on the subject, notably that the de- 

 scendant of the first clearer of the land, or one who 

 had helped to found a village, had a permanent 

 hereditary right. On the other hand, there was 

 always the principle that might was right ; — in the case 

 of every despotic ruler and every land officer under 

 the pressure of stringent demands from the Treasury 

 Department. Whatever might result from the con- 

 flict of these two sentiments, there was this important 

 corrective that the landlords never wanted to turn out 

 a cultivator as long as he would work diligently ; they 

 were only too eager to keep him. Consequently, the 

 right to eject a tenant was not a matter that occurred 

 to anyone to consider; while as to "enhancement," if 

 an overzealous collector or greedy contractor made 

 his demands so high that the cultivator was forced to 



