Manual For The Guidance Of Revenue Officers In The Punjab

Anne Murphy offers a groundbreaking exploration of material representations of the Sikh past, showing how objects, as well as historical sites, and texts, have played a vital role in the production of the Sikh community as an evolving historical and social formation from the eighteenth century to the present. Drawing together work in religious studies, postcolonial studies, and history, Murphy explores how 'relic' objects such as garments and weaponry have, like sites, played dramatically different roles across political and social contexts-signifiers of authority and even sovereignty in one; collected, revered, and displayed with religious significance in another-and are connected to a broader engagement with the representation of the past that is central to the formation of the Sikh community. By highlighting the connections between relic objects and historical sites, and how the status of sites changed in the colonial period, she also provides crucial insight into the circumstances that brought about the birth of a new territorial imagination of the Sikh past in the early twentieth century, rooted in existing precolonial historical imaginaries centered in place and object. The life of the object today and in the past, she suggests, provides unique insight into the formation of the Sikh community and the crucial role representations play in it.

Groundbreaking analysis of how colonialism created new conceptual categories and spatial forms that reshaped rural societies. This book examines how, over colonial times, the diverse practices and customs of an existing rural universe—with its many forms of livelihood—were reshaped to create a new agrarian world of settled farming. While focusing on Punjab, India, this pathbreaking analysis offers a broad argument about the workings of colonial power: the fantasy of imperialism, it says, is to make the universe afresh. Such radical change, Neeladri Bhattacharya shows, is as much conceptual as material. Agrarian colonization was a process of creating spaces that conformed to the demands of colonial rule. It entailed establishing a regime of categories—tenancies, tenures, properties, habitations—and a framework of laws that made the change possible. Agrarian colonization was in this sense a deep conquest. Colonialism, the book suggests, has the power to revisualize and reorder social relations and bonds of community. It alters the world radically, even when it seeks to preserve elements of the old. The changes it brings about are simultaneously cultural, discursive, legal, linguistic, spatial, social, and economic. Moving from intent to action, concepts to practices, legal enactments to court battles, official discourses to folklore, this book explores the conflicted and dialogic nature of a transformative process. By analyzing this great conquest, and the often silent ways in which it unfolds, the book asks every historian to rethink the practice of writing agrarian history and reflect on the larger issues of doing history. “The Great Agrarian Conquest is a subtle and substantial work of scholarship. If there is one book Indians need to read to understand how colonialism actually worked (or did not work), this is it.” — Ramachandra Guha, in The Wire, in praise of the Indian edition

A provocative examination of how the British colonial experience in India was shaped by chronic unease, anxiety, and insecurity.

The proclamation of the annexation of Punjab was made by the British Government on 30th March, 1849 and the Government of the Province was put under the Board of Administration. This Board, too, was abolished in th February 1853 and its powers were Vested in the Chief Commissioner who controlled the administration of the Provinces with the help of Judicial Commissioner and the Financial Commissioner. Matters relating to land-revenue settlements were regulated in accordance with Mr Thamason s Directions initially which were put in the form of a handbook by Mr Robert Cust for the first time and later on were revised by Mr D C Barkley. The Present Manual, an independent work, was issued, after the examination by the Financial Commissioner and with the approval of the Government of the Punjab, on the said manuals becoming obsolete with a view to guiding Settlement Officers in the Province concerning assessments and the preparation of the record of rights. The object of this Manual is not only to describe the present policy and procedure in the matter of land-revenue settlements but also to trace the growth of that policy and procedure from annexation to the present time. The Manual is divided into three Books-Book I deals with Historical facts, Book II delineates the Record of Rights and Book III relates to the Assessment. This work is comprehensive in its materials and contains sixteen Appendices. The Manual will certainly serve as source material to future framers of Settlement policies. Contents Chapter 1: Introductory; Chapter 2: The Making of the Panjab; Chapter 3: Development of Settlement Policy in the North-Western Provinces Down to the Period of the Annexation of the Panjab; Chapter 4: The Sikh Revenue System; Chapter 5: Summary Settlements; Chapter 6: Development of Settlement Policy in the Panjab, 1846-1897; Chapter 7: Cesses; Chapter 8: Of Tenures and the Rights of Landowners; Chapter 9: On the Rights of Tenants; Chapter 10: Preliminary Measures in Connection with a Settlement; Chapter 11: The Settlement Officer and His Establishment and the Control Exercised by the Settlement Commissioner; Chapter 12: Survey; Chapter 13: Classes of Land and Soils; Chapter 14: The Record of Rights; Chapter 15: Preparation for Assessment; Chapter 16: Assessment Circles and Circle Rates; Chapter 17: Assessment Statistics; Chapter 18: The Standard of Assessment Net Assets and Rents; Chapter 19: The Half-Net Assets Estimated Based on Batai and Zabti Rents; Chapter 20: The Half-Net Assets Estimate Based on Fixed Cash and Grain Rents; Chapter 21: Miscellaneous Sources of Income Connected with Land; Chapter 22: Reasons for Deviating from the Half-Net Assets Estimate in Assessment; Chapter 23: General Considerations Affecting the Amount of the Assessment; Chapter 24: Assessment Guides Other than the Half-Net Assets Estimate; Chapter 25: Inspection of Estates for Assessment; Chapter 26: Assessment of Particular Classes of Land; Chapter 27: Fluctuating Assessments; Chapter 28: Term of Settlement Temporary and Permanent Settlements Redemption of the Land Revenue; Chapter 29: Progressive Assessments and Protective Leases; Chapter 30: Assessment Reports; Chapter 31: Distribution of Revenue Over Estates and Announcement of New Jamas; Chapter 32: Distribution of the Revenue Over Holdings; Chapter 33: Closing Operations; Chapter 34: Miscellaneous.