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had lost all saleable value and the greater portion of arable land was 

 out of cultivation, and the efforts of the officers of Government were 

 directed towards saddling the ryots with more land than they could 

 cultivate, as was the case under the Dittam system in the dry dis- 

 tricts, Mirasi rights would rather be a burden than a privilege ; and 

 the longer this state of things continued the less would be the chance 

 of the ryots asserting their rights. In the few favorably circum- 

 stanced districts in which land had some saleable value, these rights 

 would be clung to with great tenacity. This was exactly what hap- 

 pened. The result was two schools of writers on Indian land tenures, 

 one asserting that land was the property of Government and the ryots 

 merely cultivating tenants, and the other, that the ryots were proprie- 

 tors of the land they cultivated. The Government of the day was 

 Called upon to decide between these two conflicting theories and a 

 discussion was kept up for nearly 40 years. There was one incident 

 of the Mirasi tenure which almost all engaged in the discussion were 

 unwilling to admit (viz., the absolute right of the Mirasidars to waste 

 lands), as being inconsistent with the right of Government to levy its 

 share of the crop as revenue. The Mirasidars claimed the right to 

 keep the waste lands uncultivated themselves and to prevent Govern- 

 ment from finding other ryots to cultivate them. Such a right, in the 

 interests of revenue and of the general public, the Government (jould 

 not acknowledge. The Government was willing, however, to acknow- 

 ledge the right of the Mirasidars to hold the lands they cultivated so 

 long as they paid the assessment ; nay more, it was willing to concede 

 the same right even to new cultivators and it reduced the heavy 

 assessments wherever it was necessary to create a substantial interest 

 for the ryot in the soil. As regards waste lands whenever there was 

 any demand for them it was willing to acknowledge the rights of the 

 Mirasidars so far as to give them the refusal, before granting them 

 to strangers, but in this respect it would treat the old Mirasidars and 

 the new puttadars in the same way. Government recognized mirasi 

 rights only to this extent, but if the Mirasidars had any further 

 rights they were to establish them before the judicial tribunals. In 

 the language of the Board of that day, by this decision the question 

 of Mirasi rights was " set at rest.^^ The following quotations from 

 " Papers on Mirasi Right " establish this position : — 



In their Despatch, dated 28th July 1841, the Court of Directors 

 stated that '^ without entering upon a discussion of the respective 

 rights of Government and the Mirasidars over the waste lands (a point 

 still under tbe consideration of the superior tribunal to which the 

 case has been appealed), it will be enough for us to state our opinion 

 that it is desirable that in all cases where Payacarries propose to culti- 

 vate the waste lands of a Mirasi village, their proposal should be in 

 the first instance communicated to the Mirasidars, to whom, in the 

 event of their being willing to cultivate, or to give security for the 

 revenue assessable on the land, the preference should be given. We 

 consider that the Government has a clear right to the revenue to be 

 derived from the conversion of waste lands into arable, but we, at the 

 same time, think it preferable that this object should be obtained, 

 whenever practicable, without the intrusion of strangers into the 

 village community.'^ 



