7 - Claiming an inheritance: the Inam Commission and the Cincvad Samsthan

Summary

Although seeking only to settle title to alienated revenue, the Inam Commission became inextricably involved with the regulation of Hindu inheritance. This was particularly so in three related areas: adoption, the rights of widows, and varieties of inheritance within particular lineages. Adoption was an issue that in the pre-Mutiny period pervaded all British relations with their privileged subjects. Although it was preeminently a problem in the succession to (and lapse to the state of) princely states, adoption also became the central issue in the settlement of the Cincvad Samsthan to be described in this chapter. A consideration of the rights of widows as heirs and managers of inam follows naturally from the issues surrounding adoption. In essence, what part did a widow have in adopting a son, advocating his interests, or acting as his guardian. The critics of the Inam Commission only occasionally considered this aspect of Hindu inheritance; secondary scholarship has paid scant attention to the widow; but here, her anomolous position in Hindu lineages, especially her possible access to real power within the lineage, is a crucial theme. Varieties of inheritance, particularly the distinction between partible and impartible estates, have been examined in the first part of this book in connection with the way the Peshva arranged the descent of the Devs' inam. The quite special features of the Devs' inheritance would bedevil the Inam Commission's efforts to make a straightforward settlement of the lineage's inam.