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Glorious pasts of forest dwellers: Memories of land in the ex-zamindari of Borasambar, Central Provinces, 1861–1905

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Sohini Sengupta Open the ORCID record for Sohini Sengupta [Opens in a new window]
Sohini Sengupta*
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School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
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Abstract

This article discusses the shifts in rights over land of Binjhal Adivasi people in the wake of colonial rule in the ex-zamindari of Borasambar, located in the British Central Provinces in the eventful period from 1860–1926. Oral narratives and documents preserved by Binjhal villagers juxtaposed with archived records of military expeditions, village surveys, administrative letters, and land settlement reports reveal how Binjhal ancestors lost titled land and offices of headmanship, which, over time, impoverished and diminished them in the rural hierarchy. The research finds that the codification of selective custom as legal rights accommodated colonial land policies to promote social change and agricultural improvement. Environmental histories document how nineteenth-century forest enclosures and agrarian order brought Adivasi areas within state control. Revisionist research highlights historically contingent outcomes of colonial rule. The Adivasi pasts in this article reveal how the interpretations of legal culture by local actors, who transacted with the administration, led to variable outcomes for a pre-colonial land-controlling group. By examining the truth claims in fragments of Binjhal voices and narratives about them, in village memories and archives, through a threefold examination of the past—pragmatic, habitual, and episodic—this article explores the historicity of Adivasi land memories. Here, stories of past glory lead to claims of legal entitlements rather than restitution of ancient rule, and injustices are described in the idiom of disrupted kinship and transgressions of women, illuminating the varied routes through which groups residing in relatively non-agrarian upland habitats became Adivasi.

Keywords

LandAdivasimemorylawcolonialism
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 56 , Special Issue 5: Multiple Worlds of the Adivasi , September 2022 , pp. 1595 - 1641
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Bates, Crispin, Subalterns and Raj: South Asia since 1600, New York: Routledge, 2007, pp. 46–47Google Scholar.

2 Prasad, Archana, ‘Military Conflict and Forests in Central Provinces, India: Gonds and the Gondwana Region in Pre-colonial History’, Environment and History, 5, 3, 1999, pp. 361–375CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Mughals and the Maratha regimes used the term ‘Gondwana’ to refer to parts of Central India. From the mid-nineteenth century it was used to describe the Central Provinces, as the densely forested ancient lands of the Gond that was far from the mainstream of Indian civilization. See Eyre Chatterton, The Story of Gondwana, London, New York [etc.]: Sir I. Pitman and Sons, Ltd, 1916.

4 John William Neill and Central Provinces (India), Census Office, Central Provinces Census 1872, Census Report 1871, Nagpur (publisher not identified), W 7868/9, India Office Records and Private Papers (IOR), British Library (BL).

5 Wilfrid Vernon Grigson, The Aboriginal Problem in the Central Provinces and Berar, Nagpur: Government Printing, Central Provinces and Berar, 1944, pp. 3–4. Discussions in this report refer to the possible protection that could be offered to the aboriginal tenants of selected areas of the Central Provinces to prevent the expropriation of their land.

6 Bates, Subalterns and Raj, p. 46.

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9 There is a large scholarship on the Adivasi in the context of India. The term refers to a variety of meanings: histories of nineteenth-century subjugation and resistance, and constitutional protection of groups classified as Scheduled Tribes, original inhabitants, groups outside the Hindu caste system, exploited underclass in remote rural areas, and, more recently, indigenous people. See Karlsson, Bengt, ‘Introduction’, in Karlsson, B. T. and Subba, T. B. (eds), The Politics of Indigeneity in India, London: Kegan Paul, 2006, pp. 1–19Google Scholar; Xaxa, Virginius, ‘Coercive “Development”’, Economic and Political Weekly, 53, 45, 2018, pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

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11 Padel, Felix, Sacrificing People: Invasion of a Tribal Landscape, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2009Google Scholar.

12 Xaxa, ‘Coercive “Development”’; Padel, Sacrificing People.

13 Shah, Alpa, ‘The Dark Side of Indigeneity? Indigenous People, Rights and Development in India’, History Compass, 5, 6, 2007, pp. 1806–1822CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steur, Luisa, ‘Adivasis, Communists, and the Rise of Indigenism in Kerala’, Dialectical Anthropology, 35, 1, 2011, pp. 59–76, p. 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Shah, ‘The Dark Side of Indigeneity?’; C. Bates and A. Shah (eds), Savage Attack: Tribal Insurgency in India, New Delhi: Routledge, 2014, Introduction.

15 Steur, ‘Adivasis, Communists, and the Rise of Indigenism’, p. 66.

16 Ajay Skaria, Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and Wilderness in Western India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999; Stuart Corbridge, Sarah Jewitt and Sanjay Kumar (eds), Jharkhand: Environment, Development, Ethnicity, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 146; Steur, ‘Adivasis, Communists, and the Rise of Indigenism’, p. 60.

17 Steur, ‘Adivasis, Communists, and the Rise of Indigenism’, p. 60.

18 Shashank Kela, ‘Adivasi and Peasant: Reflections on Indian Social History’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 33, 3, 2006, pp. 502–525, p. 60; Vinita Damodaran, ‘Colonial Constructions of the “Tribe” in India: The Case of Chotanagpur’, Indian Historical Review, 33, 1, 2006, pp. 44–75.

19 See, for instance, the detailed history of women's political roles in the Himalayan borderland kingdoms in the nineteenth century during the assumption of British East India Company (EIC) rule, in Arik Moran, ‘Widowed Ranis, Scheming Rajas, and the Making of “Rajput Tradition’”, in his Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland: Rajput Identity during the Early Colonial Encounter, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019, pp. 164–196. Modern historical narratives accruing to Moran do not acknowledge women's agency due to ‘purist interpretation’ of pre-colonial kingship, but historians find ‘scale, intricacy and tenacious hold’ in the local memories of royal women.

20 A very different interpretation of women's agency related to their control and subordination is found in Deniz Kandiyoti's well-known conceptualization of patrilocal and patrilineal rural households. How women strived to protect existing spheres of autonomy and resisted becoming overly dependent on their husbands provide some direction to understanding their transactions around land. Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy’, Gender and Society, 2, 3, September 1988, pp. 274–290.

21 Grigson, The Aboriginal Problem, p. 91.

22 Jonathan Peel describes this as the ‘lived-in-time-ness’ of human action. J. D. Y. Peel, ‘For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things? Missionary Narrative and Historical Anthropology’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37, 3, 1995, pp. 581–607.

23 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History and Forgetting, (trans) K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 496–497.

24 Ibid., p. 496.

25 Gunnel Cederlof, ‘Narratives of Rights: Codifying People and Land in Early Nineteenth-Century Nilgiris’, Environment and History, 8, 3, 2002, pp. 319–362, p. 322.

26 Richard Saumarez Smith, ‘Rule-by-Records and Rule-by-Reports: Complementary Aspects of British Imperial Rule of Law’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 19, 1, 1985, pp. 153–176; Lauren Benton, ‘Colonial Law and Cultural Difference: Jurisdictional Politics and the Formation of the Colonial State’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41, 3, 1999, pp. 563–588, pp. 573–574.

27 Benton, ‘Colonial Law and Cultural Difference’, p. 574.

28 D. Washbrook, ‘Law, State and Society in Colonial India', in C. Baker, G. Johnson, and J. Gallagher (eds), Power, Profit and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, cited in K. Sivaramakrishnan, ‘Colonialism and Forestry in India: Imagining the Past in Present Politics’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37, 1, 1995, pp. 3–40, p. 12.

29 David Mosse, ‘Rule and Representation: Transformations in the Governance of the Water Commons in British South India’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 65, 1, 2006, pp. 61–90.

30 Vinita Damodaran, ‘Indigenous Agency: Customary Rights and Tribal Protection in Eastern India 1830–1930’, History Workshop, 76, 2013, pp. 85–110.

31 Andrew Stephen Sartori, ‘A Liberal Discourse of Custom in Colonial Bengal’, Past and Present, 212, 2011, pp. 163–197. Chanock argues how the legal definition of ‘custom’ came from the actions of the litigants. Martin Chanock, ‘A Peculiar Sharpness: An Essay on Property in the History of Customary Law in Colonial Africa’, The Journal of African History, 32, 1, 1991, pp. 65–88, p. 78.

32 These rights, argues Shutzer, based on his research in highland western Odisha, were linked to productivist logic and Lockean principle, and not territorial group identities. Matthew B. Shutzer, ‘The Practice of Custom in India's Recognition of Forest Right's Act: Case Studies from Kalahandi, Odisha’, Samaj, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 7, 2013. Also see Andrew Stephen Sartori, Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History, Berkeley Series in British Studies, Oakland: University of California Press, 2014.

33 Typical Central Indian deciduous trees with a variety of uses for rural people: Mahul: Madhuca Indica; Char: Buchanania Lanzan; Semel: Bombax Ceiba—Silk Cotton; Sahaj: Terminalia tomentosa.

34 Binjhals (also spelt as Binjhwar) were included in the list of Scheduled Tribes in 1976. The 2011 Census of India enumerated the population of this group as 137,040. From Home/PCA/A-11 Individual Scheduled Tribe Primary Census Abstract Data and its Appendix, available at https://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/PCA/ST.html, (last accessed 20 November 2021).

35 My most recent visit to the area took place in 2014.

36 In the description provided by Panda, the western village Binjhals were closer to the standard understanding of tribal societies as ordered by stratified lineages and exogamous clans. See Premananda Panda, Traditional Political System of the Binjhals, New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 2005.

37 This interpretation is found in academic publications and government reports; see Lidia Guzy, Marginalised Music: Music, Religion and Politics from Western Orissa, Berlin: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, 2005; Government of India, Binjhals: Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Bhubaneswar, Odisha: Research and Training Institute, 2015, available at http://www.kbk.nic.in/tribalprofile/Binjhal.pdf, [accessed 5 July 2022].

38 Alice Tilche, ‘A Forgotten Adivasi Landscape: Museums and Memory in Western India’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 49, 2, June 2015, pp. 188–215.

39 All village names have been changed.

40 Ghens was a smaller zamindari adjoining Borasambar whose Binjhal ruler was executed following the 1857 uprising.

41 In media reports about the campaign against mining in Gandhamardan, the critical issues were biodiversity, livelihoods, and the sacred temple, not ‘indigenous rights’. ‘Gandhamardan Revisited’, 15 June 2001, available at https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/gandhamardan-revisited-16391, [accessed 5 July 2022].

42 Piers Vitebsky discusses the legitimacy of stored memories, such as that in the written works of anthropologists, in a society that was becoming increasingly disconnected from past practices under the influence of mainstream religion. Piers Vitebsky, ‘Loving and Forgetting: Moments of Inarticulacy in Tribal India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14, 2, 2008, pp. 243–261, pp. 256–257.

43 For an account of the Gandhamardan campaign through the idiom of religion, see Guzy, Marginalised Music.

44 For a discussion about the recent rise of nationalism among Central Indian Adivasi communities, see Peggy Froerer, ‘Emphasizing “Others”: The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in a Central Indian Tribal Community’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12, 1, 2006, pp. 39–59.

45 The Binjhals used the terms ‘king’ and ‘zamindar’ with respect to the ruler of Borasambar. While the ruler was their king (the raja of the Binjhals), he was a zamindar with respect to greater kingdoms. These terminologies changed from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries when the EIC entered into independent treaties with segments of the Mahanadi valley kingdoms. In the nineteenth century Borasambar zamindari was under the direct control of the district administration of Sambalpur as against the relative autonomy of the ‘feudatory states’ of Odisha such as Patna, Kalahandi, and Sonepur (the Central Provinces before 1905). There were 24 indirectly ruled feudatory states in the state of Odisha in the early twentieth century located in the hilly and highland areas, surrounded by the directly governed British districts. See L. E. B. Cobden-Ramsay, Bengal District Gazetteers: Feudatory States of Orissa, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1910. Baden-Powell lists 116 zamindaris and 15 feudatory states in the Central Provinces: see B. H. Baden-Powell, The Land Systems of British India, Vol. II, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892, pp. 445–446.

46 The 1927 land revenue settlement report dates this event to 1917.

47 Copy of the order passed by the subdivisional magistrate Bargarh in Criminal case mis/…of 1918. Shared by Mahulkonda village household.

48 Benton, ‘Colonial Law and Cultural Difference’, p. 573.

49 Ibid., p. 574.

50 Char is the local name of the tropical deciduous tree, Buchanania Lanzan Spreng. It is known to be associated with Sal (Shorea Robusta) forests.

51 Bariha is an honorific used to address high status Binjhals, including the Borasambar zamindar. C. U. Wills provides an interesting discussion about the term ‘Bariha’ in medieval central India: see Cecil Upton Wills, ‘The Territorial System of the Rajput Kingdoms of Medieval Chattisgarh’, Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 15, 1919, pp. 197–262.

52 Sahajmal: name of a field; Sahaj: tree (Terminalia Tomentosa); Mal: rolling upland.

53 A hill named after a spirit guardian—‘Bonabira’ (Bona—Forest, Bira—Brave); Dongar: hill or highland.

54 Ricoeur, Memory, History and Forgetting, p. 496.

55 Ibid., pp. 496–497.

56 See a series of letters exchanged between the political agent Major Roughsedge in charge of the South West Frontier of the Bengal presidency and his counterparts and superior officials, in which they discussed the necessity of conducting a coordinated military campaign against the zamindars of Borasambar and Sonakhan. Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India/Bengal Political Department No. 22. Operations against the Zemindar of Boorah Sambah, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

57 The second Anglo-Maratha war, fought between 1802–1805, led to the defeat of the Marathas. After their defeat, the Marathas entered a period of reciprocity with the British. This relationship lasted until the end of the third Anglo-Maratha war. After 1818, the Nagpur-controlled territories came to the British and the Maratha states entered into a ‘protective alliance’ with the EIC. For the details of this alliance that followed military campaigns, see Huw J. Davies, ‘Wellington's First Command: The Political and Military Campaign against Dhoondiah Vagh, February–September 1800’, Modern Asian Studies, 44, 5, 2010, pp. 1081–1113, p. 1085.

58 Richard Jenkins, Report on the Territories of the Rajah of Nagpore, submitted to the Supreme Government of India. Resident at the court of his Highness the Rajah of Nagpore, Calcutta: From the Government Gazette Press, 1827, pp. 1–2. Mahanadi valley kingdoms described as ‘the eighteen forts’ (athara-garh), including speculation about their origin and relation to the Marathas, are listed in C. U. Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads. Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries. Volume I. The treaties, &c., relating to the United Provinces, Oudh, Bengal, and Central Provinces, Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1909, p. 189.

59 A detailed early account of the forest kingdoms whose rulers commanded hill passes and how road routes were full of robbers, bandits, and wild animals can be found in the travel account of an emissary of Robert Clive, who travelled at the latter's behest, from Bengal to Sambalpur at the end of the eighteenth century. T. Motte, ‘Narrative of a Journey to the Diamond Mines at Sumbhulpoor in the Province of Orissa. (Undertaken in the year 1766, by the direction of the late Lord Clive, then Governor of Bengal)’, Asiatic Annual Register or a view of the history of Hindustan and of the Politics, Commerce and Literature of Asia for the year 1799, London: J. Debrett, Piccadilly, 1801, 2nd edn, pp. 48–84. Also see Lt. M. Kittoe, ‘Journal of Orissa’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay, VIII, 1839, pp. 367–385, 474–480, 606–620 and 671–681.

60 Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India/Bengal Political Department, No. 22. Operations against the Zemindar of Boorah Sambah, Extract: Bengal Political Consultations, December 15, 1818, from Major E. Roughsedge commanding N126 South West Frontier to John Adams Esq. Chief Secretary to the Government, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

61 Extract: Bengal Political Consultation, 1819, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL. The political situation and tribute payment status of the local zamindaris with the EIC after 1819 can be found in the officiating political agent Captain Wilkinson's letters of 1832–1833 and the governor general's agent J. R. Ouseley's letters. Ouseley mentions that officials and soldiers were afraid to travel to this region and mentions the death of the previous agent, Major Roughsedge, in 1822. J. R. Ouseley, Reports by the Agent to the Governor General of tours made by him through the districts attached to the political agency of the South West frontier in 1840, 1844, 1847, Calcutta: Military Orphan Press, 1847, V/27/272/26, Indian States (1777–1950), IOR/BL.

62 Michael H. Fisher, ‘Indirect Rule in the British Empire: The Foundations of the Residency System in India (1764–1858)’, Modern Asian Studies, 18, 3, 1984, pp. 393–428, p. 397.

63 Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India/Bengal Political Department, No. 22. Extract: Bengal Political Consultations, February 22, 1819, from Major E. Roughsedge to Chief Secretary Metcalfe, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

64 Extract: Bengal Political Consultations, February 22, 1819, from Major E. Roughsedge to Chief Secretary Metcalfe, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

65 Extract: Bengal Political Consultations, January 19, 1819, from Major E. Roughsedge commanding N126 South West Frontier to John Adams Esq. Chief Secretary to the Government, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

66 Mark Brown, ‘Crime, Governance and the Company Raj: The Discovery of the Thuggee’, British Journal of Criminology, 42, 1, 2002, pp. 77–95.

67 Pindaris were informal light cavalry that accompanied the Maratha forces. Andrew Major, ‘State and Criminal Tribes in Colonial Punjab: Surveillance, Control and Reclamation of the “Dangerous Classes”’, Modern Asian Studies, 33, 3, 1999, pp. 657–688.

68 Extract: Bengal Political Consultations, February 22, 1819, from Major E. Roughsedge to Chief Secretary Metcalfe, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

69 Letter no. 12. From Lt. Col. Broughton to N. B. Edmonstone, Secretary to Government, 17 February, 1805, Translation of the deposition of Antajee Naik apprehended by the Ranee of Sonepore by order of Colonel Broughton taken in camp near Sambalpore on the 14th day of February, 1805. In Selections from the Nagpur Residency Records, Volume I, 1799–1806, p. 66, available at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62975/page/n97/mode/2up, [accessed 5 July 2022].

70 Peabody describes a similar situation in the eighteenth-century kingdom of Kota in Rajasthan where jagirdars often claimed that their rights over the territory were independent of the rights of the Maharaos by referring to the paramount powers of first the Mughal and then the Maratha. Norbert Peabody, ‘Kota Mahajagat or the Great Universe of Kota: Sovereignty and Territory in 18th century Rajasthan’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 25, 1, 1991, pp. 29–56, p. 40.

71 The feudatory state of Patna is equivalent to the present district of Bolangir in Odisha state.

72 Phuljhar is located in Raipur district in the state of Chhattisgarh.

73 Extract: Bengal Political Consultations, February 22, 1819, from Major E. Roughsedge to Chief Secretary Metcalfe, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

74 Extract of the Political Letter from Bengal, March 29, 1820, para. 79, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

75 Details of the villages, tribute amount, and military strength of the zamindaris and small kingdoms of the Mahanadi valley, including their attitude towards British rule, is provided in a detailed account by the officiating political agent Captain Wilkinson in 1832–1833. Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India/Extract Political Letter from Fort William dated November 21, 1833, para. 427, ‘The dispatch recorded as per margin contains a list of all the chiefs and zamindars estates under the superintendence of the Agent of the South West Frontier with particulars exhibited in a tabular form’. Extract: Fort William Political Consultations of October 1, 1832, F/4/1484/58532, IOR/BL. Historians have viewed plunderers and bandits as militarized arms of the indigenous state during the Mughal period. Kim A. Wagner, ‘Thuggee and Social Banditry Reconsidered’, The Historical Journal, 50, 2, 2007, pp. 353–376.

76 Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. xvi, 217, p. 16.

77 J. R. Ouseley, Reports by the Agent to the Governor General of tours made by him, V/27/272/26, Indian States (1777–1950), IOR/BL.

78 Ibid.

79 See Prasad, ‘Military Conflict’, pp. 361–375.

80 Fisher, ‘Indirect Rule in the British Empire’, p. 394.

81 For a detailed understanding of how EIC officials entered the circle of dispute and alliances at a particular phase of colonial rule, from pre-colonial sources, see Andre Wink, Land and Sovereignty in India—Agrarian Society and Politics under the Eighteenth Century Maratha Svarajya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. xviii, 417, p. 8. EIC administrators did not view the Mahanadi valley zamindars as allies in the early nineteenth century. They contemplated instead the possibility that these forest rulers could be persuaded to take a pension and retire to British territory after handing over their ‘difficult’ tracts to the British. Military officials with an ear to the ground were sceptical about the success of such propositions. They believed that the zamindars had ancestral ties to their lands and had many followers and dependents with livelihood needs and would thus refuse to surrender their territories. See letter no. 13. From N. B. Edmonstone, Secretary to Government to Captain Roughsedge, 12 September, 1805. In Selections from the Nagpur Residency Records, Volume I, pp. 67–68, available at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62975/page/n99/mode/2up, [accessed 5 July 2022].

82 In O'Malley's Gazetteer, the annexation of Sambalpur is explained as stemming from the last ruler's wish: ‘that the British Government should take over his principality and provide for his Ranis’. This is why no adopted heirs or other claimants were recognized. L. S. S. O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers; Sambalpur, Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1909, pp. 27–28.

83 An account of the British military campaign against the rebel leaders of Sambalpur can be found in ibid., pp. 27–37.

84 Close relations of the Borasambar zamindar (Hathi Singh and Kunjal Singh of Ghens) were among the main leaders in the uprising that followed the annexation of Sambalpur. Ghens was confiscated and the zamindar and his brother were executed. Ibid., p. 35.

85 Richard Temple, Report on the Administration of the Central Provinces upto August 1862, Bengal Civil Service, Officiating Chief Commissioner, Nagpore: Printed at the Chief Commissioner's Press, 1862, p. 79, Richard Temple’s Papers, EurMss/F86/61, IOR/BL.

86 After 1857, the colonial authorities consolidated and expanded their rule in the sub continent and princely states were brought under closer supervision. For an account of the effects of demilitarization on armed bands of indigenous soldiers, see Anastasia Piliavsky, ‘The Moghia Menace, or the Watch Over Watchmen in British India’, Modern Asian Studies, 47, 3, 2013, pp. 751–779, p. 754. The district of Sambalpur had 17 zamindaris.

87 During the 1818 military expedition, Major Roughsedge and his counterpart in Chhattisgarh planned a simultaneous campaign against the zamindars of Borasambar and Sonakhan, who were tied by marriage, to prevent them from seeking refuge in each other's territories. Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India/Bengal Political Department, No. 22. Communications between W. Moxon, Captain Commanding Troops in Chutteesghur, Camp, Ryepoor and Major E. Roughsedge, commanding troops in Sambulpoor, 25th November till 14th December 1818, F/4/757/20546, IOR/BL.

88 Kabuliyat is defined as the ‘acceptance of responsibility for the payment of land revenue’: in J. F. Dyer, Government of the Central Provinces and Berar: Introduction to the Land Revenue and Settlement System of the Central Provinces, Third Edition, Nagpur: Government Printing Press, 1939, Glossary of vernacular terms, p. ii.

89 Khan Bahadur Muhmmad Hamid, Settlement Officer, Final Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Sambalpur District 1926, Patna: Superintendent Government Printing, Bihar and Orissa, 1927, p. 12.

90 Wajib ul arz are described as ‘administration papers’ that laid down the terms of contract between the British government and a particular administrative unit. There were many categories of wajib ul arz, from tehsil to villages under Central Provinces malguzari tenure, whose details differed. In Dyer, Government of the Central Provinces and Berar, p. 64.

91 F. Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement of the Sambalpur District, Settlement Officer, Sambalpur, Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Press, 1906, p. 48.

92 Dyer, Government of the Central Provinces and Berar, p. 4.

93 Charles Grant, The Gazetteer of the Central Provinces of India, Nagpur: Printed at the Education Society's Press, 1870, pp. 123–124, V/6545, IOR/BL.

94 Ibid., p. 124.

95 Captain. J. E. Burton and Lieutenant J. Forsyth, ‘Four Reports on the Forests in the Eastern Portion of the Central Provinces, H.M.'s 91st Foot, Bengal Staff Corps’, 2nd February 1864, in Captain G. F. Pearson, Selections from the Records of the Government of India in the Public Works Department No. XLVII. Progress Report of the Forest Administration in the Central Provinces, 1862–63, Calcutta: O. T. Cutter Press, 1864, p. 178.

96 Hamid, Final Report, p. 32.

97 Report on the administration/management by Government of Private Estates in the Central Provinces. Resolution on the Management by Government of Private Estates in the Central Provinces during the year ending September 1886–1898, V/24/2568, IOR/BL.

98 Resolution on the Management by Government of Private Estates in the Central Provinces during the year ending September 1886, 1887, Nagpur: Printed at the Chief Commissioner's Office Press, India, V/24/2567/, IOR/BL. Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement. Resolution on the Management by Government of Private Estates in the Central Provinces for the Revenue year 1893–94, ending 30th September 1894, 1895, Nagpur: Printed at the Secretariat Press, V/24/2568, IOR/BL.

99 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 3.

100 O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers; Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement.

101 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 28.

102 Hamid, Final Report, p. 42.

103 Ibid., p. 41.

104 Ibid., pp. 30–31.

105 Ibid.

106 The 1911 census data for police station areas in the Borasambar zamindari is presented in a table with the heading: ‘Caste, Tribe or Race’, in Table V, Sambalpur District Gazetteer. Statistics, 1900–1901 to 1910–1911, Patna: Bihar and Orissa Secretariat Book Depot, 1916, pp. 6–7, R-1-2/25, Odisha State Archives. The Sambalpur census data tables of 1901 have a special category called ‘Forest Tribes’, in R. V. Russell, Central Provinces District Gazetteers. Sambalpur District. B Volume. Statistical Tables (1891–1901), Allahabad: Printed at Pioneer Press, 1905. Binjhals were listed as ‘aboriginals or hill tribes’ in the 1872 census of Sambalpur district, but the term ‘race’ was introduced later.

107 The term ‘zamindar’ in the Mughal context referred to revenue officials with local power as well as the ‘indigenous elite’ of the eighteenth century whose rights originated in the colonization of fallow land, conquest, or grants by some imperial authority. This understanding is drawn from Stewart Gordon, ‘The Slow Conquest: Administrative Integration of Malwa into the Maratha Empire, 1720–1760’, Modern Asian Studies, 11, 1, 1977, pp. 1–40, p. 3. Central Provinces officials described the zamindars of the Sambalpur region as ‘rude chiefs of old descent’ and descendants of ‘aboriginal races’: Temple, Report on the Administration of the Central Provinces, 1862, p. 70.

108 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 3.

109 The sources used in this section are: Sir Richard Temple's papers; O'Malley, Bengal District Gazetteers; Russell, Gazetteers of Sambalpur District; J. B. Fuller, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Sambalpur district of the Central Provinces, effected during the years 1885–1889, Bombay: Printed at the Education Society's Steam Press, 1891; Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement; Hamid, Final Report; H. H. Priest, Borasambar Enquiry Proceedings by Mr. Priest Settlement Officer Sambalpur, 11.12.1888 to 17.5.1889, Sambalpur: Board of Revenue and Judicial Papers; Bihar and Orissa Documents: Land Revenue File no. IV/L2 of 1915, Sambalpur: Board of Revenue and Judicial Papers: 1889–1905, Central Provinces Land Revenue Act 1881 (amended in 1898).

110 The Central Provinces malguzars are defined as ‘farmer of revenue in pre-British days converted at a first regular settlement to a proprietor’, but in Sambalpur district, as this section discusses, malguzars were simply ‘revenue farmers’ with no proprietary rights. In Dyer, Land Revenue, p. iii.

111 Bates, Subalterns and Raj, p. 46.

112 In Sambalpur district, only the zamindars were considered as malguzars and village headmen were described simply as contractors.

113 In the early twentieth century, there were 24 indirectly ruled feudatory states in Odisha, located in the hilly and highland areas in the north, west, and south that surrounded the directly governed British districts. L. E. B. Cobden-Ramsay, Bengal Gazetteers: Feudatory States of Orissa, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1910, p. 24.

114 The 116 zamindaris and 15 feudatory states of Central Provinces are listed in Baden-Powell, The Land Systems of British India, pp. 445–446. (Digital Library of India item 2015.55164.)

115 Permanent settlement under the Cornwallis code of 1793 fixed the amount of revenue assessment and gave heritable property rights to a class of people called the zamindars or landlords in Bengal. The point was to ensure stability of revenue and allocation of responsibility to identifiable persons to address the problem of ‘absconding peasants’: Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India, London and New York: Routledge, 2004, 4th edn, p. 250.

116 Dyer, Land Revenue, p. 54.

117 Temple, Report on the Administration of the Central Provinces, 1862, p. 79.

118 Dyer, Land Revenue, p. ii.

119 Temple, Report on the Administration of the Central Provinces, 1862, p. 67.

120 Ibid., pp. 70–71.

121 Dyer, Land Revenue, p. 48.

122 By 1895, the period of land settlement was reduced from 30 to 20 years for Central Provinces and Punjab. This decision was based on the understanding that revenue assessment should be more frequently revised in areas with characteristics such as: ‘wasteland’, ‘low rent’, and ‘fluctuating cultivation’. See the discussion in Dyer, Land Revenue, p. 54.

123 Fuller, Report on the Land Revenue Settlement of the Sambalpur District, p. 21.

124 Ibid., p. 8.

125 A. M. Russell, Land Revenue Settlement of the Sambalpur District, 1876–77 (published 1883), cited in Dyer, Land Revenue, p. 49.

126 Revenue department D-O no. 166, Policy to be followed in dealing with proposals for the cancellation of the protected status of thikadars in zamindari villages in the district of Sambalpur under section 65A of the Central Provinces Land Revenue Act, 1881 (Act XVIII of 1881). Bihar and Orissa Documents. Land Revenue file No.1V L/2 of 1915, 20178/B&O DOC/Notes, Orissa State Archives (OSA), Bhubaneswar (B).

127 Russell, Land Revenue Settlement, cited in Dyer, Land Revenue, p. 49.

128 Sections 46 and 47 of the Central Provinces land Revenue Act prohibited the transfer of land held by occupancy tenants. In Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 2.

129 Ibid., p. 49.

130 Dyer, Land Revenue, p. 14.

131 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 49.

132 Fuller, Land Revenue Settlement. Appendix XI, pp. 89–91.

133 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 14.

134 Crispin Bates and Alpa Shah, ‘Introduction’, in Bates and Shah (eds), Savage Attack, p. 2.

135 In Sambalpur zamindaris 57 per cent of tenant cultivators were classed as C and D, with their semi-aboriginal or aboriginal attributes described. Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 3.

136 Ibid., p. 3.

137 Nicholas Dirks, ‘From Little King to Landlord: Property, Law, and the Gift under the Madras Permanent Settlement’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28, 2, 1986, pp. 307–333.

138 Rosalind O'Hanlon and David Washbrook, ‘After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism, and Politics in the Third World’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34, 1, 1992, pp. 141–167.

139 Gunnel Cederlöf, ‘The Agency of the Colonial Subject: Claims and Rights in Forestlands in the Early Nineteenth-Century Nilgiris’, Studies in History, 21, 2, 2005, pp. 247–269.

140 Peter Robb, ‘Ancient Rights and Future Comfort: Bihar, the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 and British Rule in India’, London Studies on South Asia, 13, 1997, available at https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/768/4/ch5-8%28p146-277%29.pdf, [accessed 6 July 2022].

141 Hamid, Final Report, p. 42.

142 The details of these short duration settlements are given in ibid.

143 Under Section 65 A of the Central Provinces Land Revenue Act 1881 (by the amending Act of 1889), settlement officers or deputy commissioners could enquire into the status of the thekadar, assess the extent of ‘improvement’ they had brought about in the village, and grant them protection against increases in revenue or dispossession (pp. 68–69).

144 Fuller, Report on the Land Settlement. Appendix XI, pp. 89–91.

145 Ibid.

146 Priest, Borasambar Enquiry Proceedings, pp. 130–131, of the compilation, Ac No.138/S, OSA, B. This report contains the survey data from 450 villages of Borasambar. The survey was conducted to determine whether ‘protected status’ should be granted to the village headmen of these villages.

147 Ibid., p. 125.

148 Ibid.

149 Ibid., p. 130.

150 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 49.

151 Ibid.

152 A different spelling of Binjhal.

153 Russell, Gazetteers of Sambalpur District, p. 10.

154 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, pp. 3–4.

155 Anand Yang, ‘An Institutional Shelter: The Court of Wards in Late Nineteenth-Century Bihar’, Modern Asian Studies, 13, 2, 1979, pp. 247–264.

156 Ibid., p. 249.

157 Central Provinces Revenue Department, Report on the management by government of private estates in the Central Provinces 1884/85–1890/91, 1889, p. 25, V/24/2567, IOR/BL.

158 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 27.

159 Central Provinces Revenue Department, Report on the management by government of private estates in the Central Provinces, during the year ending 1886, p. 25, V/24/2568, IOR/BL.

160 Central Provinces Revenue Department, Report on the management by government of private estates in the Central Provinces 1884/85–1890/91, 1889, p. 29, V/24/2567, IOR/BL.

161 Fuller, Report on the Land Settlement.

162 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement.

163 Hamid, Final Report, pp. 30–31.

164 The distance of Borasambar from the railways prevented the exploitation of forests. Mentioned in Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 5.

165 Protected Status to Gaontiahs in zamindaris. Letters and Correspondence, 1889–1905. Sambalpur: Board of Revenue and Judicial Papers. Ac no. 139/S, OAS/B.

166 Ibid.

167 Ibid.

168 In the Court of Munsiff Bargarh: Title Suit no. 72 of 1924, personal copy of the old headmen of Loharmal village. This document, preserved by the descendants of the old headmen, was shown to me during fieldwork.

169 Ibid.

170 The Central Provinces Land Revenue Act of 1881 details innumerable litigations related to the rights of co-sharers of the sir/bhogra; and measures were put in place to address these issues.

171 Hamid, Final report, pp. 30–31.

172 Resolution on the Management by Government of Private Estates in the Central Provinces during the year ending September 30th 1887. Nagpur: Printed at the Chief Commissioner's Office Press, 1888, p. 29, V/24/2567, IOR/BL.

173 Resolution on the Management by Government of Private Estates in the Central Provinces for the Revenue year 1887–88, ending September 1888. Nagpur: Printed at the Chief Commissioner's Office Press, 1889, V/24/2567, IOR/BL. Extract from the Proceedings of the Chief Commissioner, Central Provinces, in the revenue department, No. 1267 S, dated Nagpur, 23rd September 1889, p. 36. District Sambalpur.

174 For an account of the religious works sponsored by the Borasambar zamindar, Rajendra Singh, see Guzy, Marginalised Music. p. 40.

175 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, Appendix XII, p. xxii.

176 Grigson, The Aboriginal Problem, p. 87, writes that, ‘in Sambalpur as in this province, transfers have been freely made by the indirect method of surrender to the landlord and re-settlement by him with the transferee’.

177 The Central Provinces Land Revenue Act of 1881 (and the new amended Act of 1917) and the Central Provinces Land Tenancy Act of 1898 (new Act of 1920) remained applicable in Sambalpur District. Hamid, Final Report, p. 83. A detailed discussion of tenancy land transfers under these Acts is available in Grigson, The Aboriginal Problem, pp. 86–89.

178 Under section 46(3) of the Central Provinces Tenancy Act of 1898, ‘transfer of occupancy land except in the form of annual sub-lease’ was prohibited and transfers made in violation of this law could be challenged by entitled heirs or the landlord within two years leading to the cancellation of the transfer. Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, p. 3.

179 Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, Appendix D, p. viii.

180 Based on the 1906 and 1926 record of rights of Mahulkonda, Kondapalli, Loharmal, and Mohda.

181 Hamid, Final Report, p. 83.

182 W. V. Grigson argued for the extension of the Central Provinces Land Alienation Act to aboriginal tenants. In Grigson, The Aboriginal Problem, p. 19.

183 Dyer discusses how in the Central Provinces Land Alienation Act, ii, 1916 was meant for ‘the protection of aboriginal landowners and to secure their retention on the land…’. But these provisions were only applicable to ‘backward tracts’ and not the Sambalpur district. Dyer, Land Revenue, p. 79. Hamid, the settlement officer of Sambalpur, argued that the protection clauses should be removed or reformulated in line with the Chota Nagpur tenancy laws. Hamid, Final Report, p. 83.

184 Sambalpur district became an important centre of nationalist movements.

185 Hamid, Final Report, p. 83.

186 Mahesh Rangarajan, Fencing the Forest: Conservation and Ecological Change in India's Central Provinces 1860–1914, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996; Prasad, ‘Military Conflict’, p. 364.

187 The 1872 census of Sambalpur district listed 348,262 people as aboriginal and hill tribes. John William Neill and Central Provinces (India), Census Office, ‘Statement Number V-B, Statement of Nationalities, Races, Tribes and Castes of the Sambalpur District’, in Central Provinces Census 1872, Census Report 1871, Nagpur: (n.p.), p. 306, W/7868/9, IOR/BL.

188 According to Andre Wink, farming out revenue collection was a strategy that was used by the Marathas in the eighteenth century in newly acquired areas where they were uncertain about success and also to restore and expand agriculture. The process was institutionalized after 1761. Andre Wink, ‘Maratha Revenue Farming’, Modern Asian Studies, 17, 4, 1983, pp. 591–628, p. 592.

189 Ibid., p. 593.

190 Sundar, ‘Laws, Policies and Practices in Jharkhand’, p. 4460.

191 Calculated from Dewar, Report of the Land Revenue Settlement, ‘Home-farm land’, p. viii.

192 Russell, Land Revenue Settlement, p. 10.

193 Hamid, Final Report, p. 13.

194 Protected Status to Gaontiahs in zamindaris. Letters and Correspondence, 1889–1905. Ac no. 139/S, OAS/B.

195 Village grazing land and forests were marked by plot numbers and could not be occupied or used by tenants, headmen, or any other person without the permission of the deputy commissioner. Hamid, Final Report, p. 37.

196 Grigson, The Aboriginal Problem, p. 87.

197 Eric Stokes describes how, in the context of the United Provinces, a growing sense of ‘individual rights’ increased the demands from co-sharers to have their ‘interests recorded officially’ in the late nineteenth century, whereas they had been satisfied with informal rights in the past. Eric Stokes, Peasants and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 208.

198 Bates and Shah (eds), Savage Attack, pp. 3, 10.

199 Mosse, ‘Rules and Representation’, p. 61.

200 Vitebsky, ‘Loving and Forgetting’, p. 243.

201 Roger Chartier, On the Edge of the Cliff; History, Language and Practice, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p. 20.

202 Rogers Brubaker, Grounds for Difference, Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2015, p. 11.

203 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume I (trans Katherine McLaughlin and David Pellauer), Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984, p. 178.

204 Memories of labouring in the fields of sahukars (farmers and moneylenders) tie Binjhal pasts not only to those of their dispossessed ancestors but also to other labouring groups whose land access became minimal as the twentieth century progressed. See Sohini Sengupta, ‘Freedom Talk of Plough-men: Bondage and Seasonal Migration in East-Central India’, in Sadan Jha and Pushpendra Kumar Singh (eds), Home, Belonging and Memory in Migration, London and New York: Routledge; South Asia edn, 2020, pp. 82–101.