Land Rights in India Policies

movements and challenges ■■■■■■

1st Edition Varsha Bhagat Ganguly
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/land-rights-in-india-policies-movements-and-challeng
es-%e5%8d%b0%e5%ba%a6%e7%9a%84%e5%9c%9f%e5%9c%b0%e6%9d%83-1
st-edition-varsha-bhagat-ganguly/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Starting Out The c3 Sicilian 1st Edition John Emms

https://ebookmeta.com/product/starting-out-the-c3-sicilian-1st-
edition-john-emms/

English Grammar Exercises with answers Part 4 Your

quest towards C2 1st Edition Daniel B. Smith

https://ebookmeta.com/product/english-grammar-exercises-with-
answers-part-4-your-quest-towards-c2-1st-edition-daniel-b-smith/

Land Rights in India Policies movements and challenges

■■■■■■ 1st Edition Varsha Bhagat Ganguly

https://ebookmeta.com/product/land-rights-in-india-policies-
movements-and-challenges-
%e5%8d%b0%e5%ba%a6%e7%9a%84%e5%9c%9f%e5%9c%b0%e6%9d%83-1st-
edition-varsha-bhagat-ganguly/

E Waste Management Challenges and Opportunities in

India 1st Edition Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly

https://ebookmeta.com/product/e-waste-management-challenges-and-
opportunities-in-india-1st-edition-varsha-bhagat-ganguly/
The Modern English 1 c4 c5 1 Nf6 1 e6 Volume 2 1st
Edition Kiril Georgiev

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-modern-
english-1-c4-c5-1-nf6-1-e6-volume-2-1st-edition-kiril-georgiev/

Looking at law through children s eyes 93 Human Rights

Research Series 1st Edition Marieke J. Hopman

https://ebookmeta.com/product/looking-at-law-through-children-s-
eyes-93-human-rights-research-series-1st-edition-marieke-j-
hopman/

The Ethics of Staying Social Movements and Land Rights

Politics in Pakistan 1st Edition Mubbashir A. Rizvi

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-ethics-of-staying-social-
movements-and-land-rights-politics-in-pakistan-1st-edition-
mubbashir-a-rizvi/

Tribal Rights in India Challenges and Achievement in

21st Century 1st Edition Sumant Kumar

https://ebookmeta.com/product/tribal-rights-in-india-challenges-
and-achievement-in-21st-century-1st-edition-sumant-kumar/

After the Flight 93 Election The Vote that Saved

America and What We Still Have to Lose 1st Edition
Michael Anton

https://ebookmeta.com/product/after-the-flight-93-election-the-
vote-that-saved-america-and-what-we-still-have-to-lose-1st-
edition-michael-anton/
 LAND RIGHTS IN INDIA

This volume engages with the topical issue of land rights in neoliberal India.
It examines government policies, laws, land governance and land reforms
from the perspective of social justice and people’s response to dispossession
of land.
Looking beyond the dominant discourse of land acquisition and the con-
ception of land as a commodity for economic growth, the book explores
critical themes including issues of social identity, culture, livelihood and
food security through a study of land reform; reviews existing land policies
and legal dimensions; and discusses issues and challenges of land governance
and land dependents as well as perspectives from people’s movements.
Lucidly written, based on empirical research and comprehensive in its
treatment of a contentious concern, this volume will be useful to schol-
ars and researchers of economics and public policy, development studies,
political science and political economy. It will also interest scholars of South
Asian studies and sociology.

Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly is Professor at the Centre for Rural Studies, Lal

Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. Previous-
ly, she was Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla. At
present, her work deals with land administration and rural studies, focusing
on development and social issues. Some of her seminal works on marginal-
ised communities include Unnatural Death of Women in Gujarat (1989);
Vihoni: Situation of Rural Widows in Gujarat (1994); Land Alienation
among Tribals in Gujarat (co-author, 2000); Conservation, Displacement
and Deprivation: Maldhari of Gir Forest of Gujarat (2004) and Changing
Contours of Gujarati Society: Identity Formation and Communal Violence
(co-author, 2006).
This page intentionally left blank
 LAND RIGHTS IN
INDIA
Policies, movements and challenges

Edited by Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly

First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla
The right of Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book.
ISBN: 978-1-138-95579-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-66607-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
 CONTENTS

List of tables viii

List of figures x
Contributors xi
Foreword by Chetan Singh xiii
Acknowledgement xviii
List of abbreviations xix

1 Introduction 1
VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY

PART I
Issues of land dependents 13

2 ‘If we had land, we would be human’: the implications

of landlessness in a Bihar village 15
ANAND CHAKRAVARTI

3 Reconfiguring ideas of land, river and forest in

the context of the Indira Sagar Polavaram National
Project on Godavari 31
R. UMAMAHESHWARI

4 Politics of commons: power relations and intersecting

gender, caste and tribe contestations 49
SOMA K. PARTHASARATHY

v
 CONTENTS

5 Is there no alternative? Land laws and tribal rights

in Odisha 65
VIDHYA DAS

6 Examining change in the nature and composition

of land lease arrangements in India:
an exploratory analysis 80
R. VIJAY AND Y. SREENIVASULU

PART II
Revisiting land reforms from a social justice
perspective 101

7 The political economy of land reform in India:

retrospect and prospect 103
MANGESH KULKARNI

8 Land rights through land reforms: a shift in

the vision and social transformation 119
CHANDRASHEKHARA B. DAMLE

9 Issues and challenges of land dependents: the case

of dalits in Uttar Pradesh 134
PRASHANT K. TRIVEDI

10 Revisiting land reforms: Kerala experience 146

SUMA SCARIA

PART III
Reviewing existing policies and laws 161

11 Questioning eminent domain: expanding the ambit

of land rights 163
ANUSHA

12 The Land Acquisition Act 2013 and

the livelihood losers 179
WALTER FERNANDES

vi
 CONTENTS

13 Asserting community forest rights on forest land in

India: emerging paradigms under the Forest Rights Act 195
MEENAL TATPATI AND NEEMA PATHAK-BROOME

PART I V
People’s movements on land question 213

14 People’s response to land dispossession: comparative

analysis of movements across India 215
SUJIT KUMAR

15 Revisiting Bhoodan and Gramdan in the context

of land rights and social transformation 230
PARAG CHOLKAR

PART V
Issues and challenges of land governance 247

16 Land governance: issues, challenges and way forward 249

B. B. SRIVASTAVA

17 The state and land records modernisation: issues and

challenges 268
PRADEEP NAYAK

Afterword 285
Glossary 289
Index 293

vii
 TABLES

4.1 Land utilisation, Southern Rajasthan, 2006–07

(area in hectares) 51
6.1 Percentage of households leasing in land and share
of leased-in land rural areas for four periods 82
6.2 Percentage of area operated by terms of lease
over time 82
6.3 Percentage of area land leased by operational
holding size class 83
6.4 Percentage distribution of area leased in by broad
size class 84
6.5 Classification of States based on relative importance
of tenancy in 2002–03 when compared to 1981–82 85
6.6 Classification of States based on relative importance
of share tenancy in 2002–03 when compared
to 1981–82 86
6.7 Classification of States based on increasing share
of land leased-in by marginal farmers 86
6.8 Location, number of households and sources
of irrigation in the surveyed villages 89
6.9 Information on extent of land owned, operated
and extent of leased land in the study villages
(land in acres) 91
6.10 Land-based importance of NCPHs in the surveyed
villages 93
6.11 Options open to agricultural labour households
and poor peasantry in the surveyed villages 95
6.A.1 Percentage of land leased-in across different States
for four periods 96
6.A.2 Percentage of area operated by sharecropping across
the states in India 97

viii
 TABLES

9.1 Percentage distribution of households by size class

of land possessed for rural Uttar Pradesh (in ha) 138
9.2 Share of dalits in number of operational holdings and
total operated area (in %) 139
10.1 Distribution of land, community wise, 1909 150
10.2 Production of rice in Kerala 151
10.3 Average size of individual and joint holding during
2001, 2005–06, 2010–11 152
10.4 Land put to non-agricultural use (in thousand ha) 152
10.5 Number of operational holdings and area operated (ha) 153
10.6 Percentage share by sex in total number and area
under operational holdings 156
10.7 Men and women as cultivators and agricultural
labourers in rural Kerala as a percentage of total
workers, Census of India 1971–2011 156
16.A.1 Status of computerisation of land records (as on
23 January 2014) 263
16.A.2 Progress in computerisation of land records in
different States of India 265

ix
 FIGURES

6.1 Relation between percentage of leased-in land and

percentage of land irrigated by canal water 92
6.2 Relation between percentage of pure tenants and
percentage of land irrigated by canal 94

x
 CONTRIBUTORS

Anusha teaches at Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi.

Anand Chakravarti retired as professor of sociology at the University of
Delhi. He also held the S.K. Dey Chair in Local Government at the
Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, from July 2013 to June 2015.
Parag Cholkar is associated with Sarvodaya Movement since about
30 years.
Chandrashekhara B. Damle served as head of the Department of Sociol-
ogy at Nehru Memorial College, Sullia of Dakshinakannada District in
Karnataka.
Vidhya Das is a joint director of an NGO–Agragamee in Odisha.
Walter Fernandes, formerly director of Indian Social Institute, New
Delhi, and North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati, and Edi-
tor of Social Action. At present Director of Research at Animation and
Research Centre, Yangon, Myanmar.
Mangesh Kulkarni teaches political science at the University of Pune.
Sujit Kumar is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Political Institu-
tions, Governance and Development (CPIGD) at Institute for Social
and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore.
Pradeep Nayak is a civil servant with Administrative Training Institute, Odi-
sha, and has recently completed his doctoral studies on the comparative
study of the computerisation of land records programme in India.
Soma K. Parthasarathy is a research scholar at the Department of Human-
ities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Neema Pathak-Broome is coordinating the Conservation and Livelihoods
Programme in Kalpavriksh and is involved in on ground facilitation, lob-

xi
 CONTRIBUTORS

bying and monitoring of the implementation of community rights under

the Forest Rights Act in India.
Suma Scaria is with the Department of Economics at the Central Univer-
sity of Karnataka, Gulbarga, Karnataka.
Y. Sreenivasulu is a faculty member at the Center for Economic and Social
Studies (CESS), Hyderabad.
B. B. Srivastava joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1978 and was
allotted to the Bihar Cadre. He was the member-secretary of the Bihar
Land Reforms Commission; his report, submitted in 2008, is under con-
sideration of the Government of Bihar.
Meenal Tatpati is involved in research and advocacy related to the imple-
mentation of the Community Forest Rights provisions of the Forest
Rights Act in India.
Prashant K. Trivedi is working with Giri Institute of Development Stud-
ies, Lucknow.
R. Umamaheshwari is currently fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced
Study, Shimla.
R. Vijay is associated with School of Economics, University of Hyderabad.

xii
 FOREWORD

This collection of articles has grown out of a national seminar that was
held at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. On behalf of the
Institute, I would like to express my thanks to Dr Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly,
who took the initiative to convene the seminar during her term as a Fellow
here and then enthusiastically followed it up with the process of collecting
and editing the articles. This volume is one of the first to appear as part of
the Golden Jubilee Series as the institute completes 50 years of its existence
in October 2015.
At the initial stage of planning itself, it became apparent that a discus-
sion on the land issue in India had become necessary. But it was also one
that was confounded by concerns of immense complexity. From the mid-
twentieth century onwards the control and management of land underwent
certain changes wherein the state had become an involved actor. To begin
with, attempts were made with varying degrees of success to implement
a series of land reforms in different parts of the country. On the other
hand, large-scale, state-led projects requiring the acquisition of extensive
areas became central to the political vision of the time: the construction of
dams and large industrial plants being the most important ones. The social
displacement and distress caused by such projects revealed that even to
fulfill national aspirations some people would be required to pay a heavier
price. The snarled web of legal questions that has subsequently trapped the
feeblest sections of society has proven difficult to disentangle. Ever more
than before, its escalating demand both in the public and private sectors,
to meet the requirements of ‘development’ and ‘growth’ has made control
over land the most controversial question. The situation today has emerged
out of the marked shifts that have occurred not only in how land is used but
also in how it is perceived. Over the long term, this change in attitude has
been fundamental and transformatory. So fundamental, indeed, that many
concepts considered ‘modern’ as we know them in India are intimately
connected to it.

xiii
 FOREWORD

Scholars have sometimes suggested that in the distant past, it was with
the emergence of a distinctly caste-based society that a correspondingly
delineated control over land, its resources and even professions found
its early beginnings. While this, indeed, may have been the trajectory of
social change, the process itself must have been immensely complicated
and stretched over millennia. Viewed from our present concern, the issue
of control over land was therefore closely associated with such social trans-
formation.
There has always been a debate whether land in India was collectively
owned by the community or whether individual ownership was the most
common form of landed property. The Indian peasant has for centuries
enjoyed the right of permanent and hereditary occupancy of land. This was
assured by the state and recognised by the superior landlords. The Ain-
i-Akbar, written during the reign of Akbar, mentions the explicit orders
that were issued by the emperor against altering official records by classify-
ing peasant-owned land (raiyat-kashat) as the personally cultivated (khud-
kashta) land of more influential madad-i-maash land grantees.
In addition to enjoying a secure right over land, the peasant-cultivators
were exceptionally mobile and could shift to a new place very quickly. Far
from evicting the peasant from the land, the zamindars sought to retain
and even coerce the peasantry into cultivating it. This inseparable bond
between the peasant and the land he cultivated often became the basis of
his exploitation. Irfan Habib noted very perceptibly that in medieval India
if the land belonged to the peasant, in an even greater sense the peasant
belonged to the land. Yet what did this belonging mean? Did it translate
into ‘ownership’ as understood by us now? Apparently, owning land was
possibly not in itself a very meaningful thing. Having a right or claim on a
share of its produce was the crucial issue. Land came with a hierarchy and
range of rights and obligations. It was a time when the central question
revolved around rights on land rather than rights to land. In this respect,
therefore, the debate today seems to have altered irretrievably.
The colonial administrator’s befuddled search for the ‘owner’ of the land
in India is an interesting one. Perhaps, the fenceless countryside without
precise markers of proprietorship was an entirely new experience for them.
To complicate things further, it soon became apparent that several claims
on the land could co-exist on a single plot of land with each claimant admit-
ting the specific right of the other. Effectively then, the resources offered
by land were shared between different people with varying claims upon
them. To colonial revenue officials this was an obvious contradiction that
needed to be resolved. In the Punjab hills, for instance, they attempted to
do so without abandoning the idea of ‘ownership’ of land as they under-
stood it. The peasant proprietor who cultivated the land and the landlord

xiv
 FOREWORD

who claimed a share of its produce, therefore, came to be classified as the

inferior proprietor (malik-i-adna) and superior proprietor (malik-i-ala)
respectively. The pre-colonial understanding of ownership (milkiyat) was
emphatically different from what it came to mean under British rule: it did
not give the ‘owner’ the absolute right of its use or abuse.
To the European mind, however, the explicit ‘ownership’ of property
with absolute and undisputed right over it was vital for living a consequen-
tial life. It was a prerequisite for acquiring respectability that brought with it
full participation in the political and decision-making processes. Under the
Fundamental Constitution of Carolina (1669) with the writing of which
John Locke had helped, a man needed to own 500 acres of land to stand
election for parliament and 50 acres simply to be able to vote. Till as late
as 1887 (Dawes Act) the United States government had sought to assimi-
late Native Americans by transforming their traditional uses and attitude
towards land and ownership. This ‘civilising process’ involved introducing
private ownership of land and settled farming; something that was in keep-
ing with the long-established belief that to be a full political participant one
needed to be propertied. The idea of an individual having exclusive use of
a particular piece of land was probably quite strange to Native Americans.
While the situation in India was not identical, there were overlapping simi-
larities. The British rulers and Indian subjects were looking at the problem
from opposite sides of the spectrum – nurtured as they were by two very
different world views.
Of course, in large parts of India the impact of colonial methods of gov-
ernance was deep and systemic. The delineation of landed property based
on a contrasting rationality transformed the character of proprietorship. It
also affected the balance of power in social relationships. In this the weakest
invariably lost. For example, with the rapid expansion of settled agriculture
in the newly established canal colonies of west Punjab in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, a new class of landowners was created in the
region, and the pastoralist who had grazed their cattle there for centuries
were completely excluded. This was also a gigantic experiment in environ-
mental and social engineering that began with the assumption that land
which not owned by individuals must necessarily belong in a complete sense
to the state. A new and even more efficient system of exploiting both peas-
ant and pastoralist was introduced. Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the radical Pakistani
poet, often wrote about the gross inequalities that this engendered.
But what of those further down the social order: the landless cultivators,
impoverished artisans and those to whom access to land and its resources
had been denied, or at any rate, always been severely restricted? They clung
precariously to the lowest rung of the ladder and were allowed basic lev-
els of human respect neither by the pre-colonial social order nor by the

xv
 FOREWORD

colonial dispensation. Once the idea of individual property in land in its

complete sense had permeated to every level under colonial rule – and once
possession land came to be widely accepted as a prerequisite for acquiring a
bare minimum of social respectability, the harsh reality of being completely
devoid of property became intolerable. The torment that this caused is
evident from a touching poem (below) written by Om Prakash Valmiki,
the well-known dalit writer, poet and intellectual, who was a Fellow of the
Indian Institute of Advanced Study at the time of his passing away:

ठाकुर का कुआँ The Well of the Lord

चूल्हा िमट्टी का The hearth of the soil
िमट्टी तालाब की The soil of the pond
तालाब ठाकुर का। The pond of the Lord.
भूख रोटी की The hunger for bread
रोटी बाजरेे की The bread from the millet
बाजरा खेत का The millet from the land
खेत ठाकुर का। The land of the Lord.
बैल ठाकुर का The oxen of the Lord
हल ठाकुर का The plough of the Lord
हल की मूठ पर हथेली अपनी Our hands on the plough
फ़सल ठाकुर की। The crop of the Lord.
कुआँ ठाकुर का The well of the Lord
पानी ठाकुर का The water of the Lord
खेत-खिलहान ठाकुर के The fields and yards of the Lord
गली-मुहल्ले ठाकुर के Lanes and localities of the Lord.
िफर अपना क्या ? Then what is ours?
गाँव ? The village?
शहर ? The town?
देश ? The country?
(Translated by Anusha)

The explicit differences between the European and Indian perspec-

tives brings to the fore another equally serious concern that we are now
confronted with. Land revenue assessment records reveal the long-drawn
and convoluted discussions that preceded the formulation of many of the
‘modern’ British land laws that were finally introduced in India. Laws and
revenue regulations introduced under British rule remain, even today, an
integral part of our legal and administrative inheritance. The claim of the

xvi
 FOREWORD

state to being the owner of all land for which no other claimant can produce
indisputable evidence of proprietorship was ferociously asserted. Quite pos-
sibly, in this lies the genesis of its present confrontation with tribal popula-
tions spread across large parts of the country. The colonial administrators
had failed to arrive at an appropriate understanding of the extensive uncul-
tivated and uncultivable areas that fell outside the formal revenue assess-
ment system. The inability or reluctance to appreciate how the state claims
on such land affect the livelihoods of the most marginalised people of the
country might possibly have been inherited in large measure by the admin-
istrative system of the Indian state after independence.
We are now witnessing movements of tribal unrest in large parts of the
country. The hunger of large private corporations for land and all that lies
beneath it has considerably complicated the matter. It has sometimes been
suggested that this represents the last stand, as it were, of a desperate people
who feel dispossessed of their inheritance. There is a sense of despair at
being overwhelmed by a vastly more powerful force with a heady assurance
of its ultimate success. There is as pressing need to listen much more closely
and carefully to the voices of anguish and anger that have been raised.
Amidst the atmosphere of drunken confidence we would do well to
remember the words of the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Muham-
mad Balkhi (Rumi) that ring a warning bell:

Sit, be still and listen

because you’re drunk
and we’re at the edge of the roof.
Chetan Singh
Director
Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla

xvii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, co-publisher of the

book tops on the list of acknowledgement. Had I not the opportunity to
organise a seminar on ‘Land rights in India and its potential for social trans-
formation’ at IIAS, this book would not have been possible. Many thanks
to my fellow colleagues for travelling along with me – from conception of
this conference to its execution – in the form of giving feedback on the
concept note, chairing session, participation and meaningful discussions.
The staff members of IIAS have demonstrated best of their hospitability
and cordiality at every stage and I’m thankful to all of them. Special thanks
to Professor Chetan Singh, Director, for the elucidated welcome note at the
conference, and a foreword, and to Shri Prem Chand for tirelessly pursuing
the process of publication. The book would not have been possible without
perpetual support of each author; their commitment and passion for land
rights have been critical in shaping up of this book. My gratitude is for
each one of the authors for being co-travellers. Special thanks to Routledge
for publishing this edited volume; otherwise each paper presented in the
conference would have been an isolated piece of writing, in absence of the
larger context of land rights in India.
My husband Probir, son Hirak and maiden family members have been
an eternal source of inspiration and encouragement. Many cheers to them!

Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly
Centre for Rural Studies
Lal Bahadur Shashtri National Academy of
Administration, Mussoorie

xviii
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AGL agricultural labour

AJAM Adivasi Janjati Adhikar Manch
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BMC Bhoomi Monitoring Cell
BPL below poverty line
BRT Biligiri Rangaswami Temple
BRTS Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Sanctuary
BSP Bahujan Samaj Party
C-DAC Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
CFR community forest rights
CFR-LAN Community Forest Rights – Learning and Advocacy
Network
CLR computerisation of land records
CPR common property resource
CSD Campaign for Survival and Dignity
CSS centrally sponsored scheme
DIT Department of Information Technology
DLC District-Level Committee
DLRS Director of Land Records and Survey
DMIC Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor
DoLR Department of Land Resources
DP displaced persons
EIA Environmental Impact Assessment
EPIP Export Promotion Industrial Park
FCA Forest Conservation Act
FD Forest Department
FDI foreign direct investment
FPIC free prior informed consent

xix
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

FRA Forest Rights Act, the full title of which is ‘The Scheduled
Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recogni-
tion of Forest Rights) Act, 2006’
GDP gross domestic product
GIS geographic information system
GoO Government of Odisha
GS Gram Sabha
ICT information and communication technology
IT information technology
JFM joint forest management
JFMC Joint Forest Management Committee
JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency
LAA Land Acquisition Act 1894
LARR Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land
Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act 2013
LRC land records computerisation
LRM land records management
LSM Lok Sangharsha Morcha
MADA Modified Area Development Approach
MFP minor forest produce
MGNREGS Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme
MNC multi-national corporation
MoEF Ministry of Environment and Forests
MoIT Ministry of Information Technology
MoRD Ministry of Rural Development
MoTA Ministry of Tribal Affairs
MSME medium- and small-scale enterprises
MSP minimum support price
NAC National Advisory Council
NCPH non-cultivating peasant household
NDA National Democratic Alliance
NDPLR National Draft Policy on Land Reform
NEP New Economic Policy
NFS non-farm service
NGO non-governmental organisation
NIC National Informatics Centre
NLRMP National Land Records Modernisation Programme
NSS National Sample Survey
NSSO National Sample Survey Organisation
NTFP non-timber forest produce
OBC other backward classes

xx
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

PA protected area
PAP project-affected person
PESA Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act
POSCO Pohang Steel Corporation
PP poor peasant
PPP public–private partnership
PPSS Pratirodh Sangram Samiti
PVTG particularly vulnerable tribal groups
RIIP Rajasthan Industries and Investment Promotion Policy
RoR records of rights
R&R rehabilitation and resettlement
RTC record of rights, tenancy and crops
SA Scheduled Area
SC Scheduled Castes
SCOPE Society for Coordination of Public Enterprises
SDLC Sub-Divisional-Level Committee
SEZ special economic zone
SHG self help group
SIA Social Impact Assessment
SIR special investment region
SMART simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent
SRA & ULR Strengthening of Revenue Administration and Updating
of Land Records
ST Scheduled Tribes
TADA Tribal Area Development Authority
THRTI Tribal and Harijan Research and Training Institute
TINA there is no alternative
TR tiger reserve
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Devel-
opment
UPA United Progressive Alliance
UPZALRA Uttar Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms
Act, 1950
UT union territory
WBLRA West Bengal Land Reform Act
WLPA Wild Life Protection Act

xxi
This page intentionally left blank
 1
INTRODUCTION

Varsha Bhagat-Ganguly

I
Land in the form of mitti and soil has been an integral part of Indian
culture and civilisation. The term mitti connotes social identity, and soil
conveys agriculture and productivity. Though the Indian Constitution is
only categorical about the state’s power over the forest, it has remained
implicit in the view that the state can exercise its powers for all types of
land, as not all laws concerning land acquisition are justiciable by plac-
ing them within the ambit of the Schedule IX of the Constitution. This
system has established norms that the state has the power to take away
or acquire land; usually land is acquired for the ‘public purpose’ and can
also be acquired from the private landowner with or without his or her
consent. This norm has established the supremacy of the state vis-à-vis its
citizens. Until the late 1980s, citizens had shown almost complete faith in
the state. In the 1980s, protests against land acquisition and demands for
land reforms and redistribution of Ceiling Surplus land became louder as
by that time many States in India had almost slowed down land reforms.
The neoliberal state has enacted laws and policies since the early 1990s
that reveal a duality of character of the state in dealing with the question
of land rights. The debate on land rights continues between the state and
citizens with remarkable tension, and largely in a bipolar manner. The
citizens, especially the land dependents and the promoters of land rights,
uphold sustainable and varied uses of different categories of land for live-
lihood, shelter and other purposes. They do not seem to appreciate the
large-scale land acquisition by the state for private sector and industries,
arguing that this attitude of the state does not take note of people’s senti-
ments and aspirations. This group of citizens resists expansion of mainly
two concepts, ‘public purpose’ and ‘eminent domain’, which expand the
state’s legitimacy based on past experiences, evidences and extrapolation
of available data.

1
 VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY

This situation has brought out the existing complexities and hierarchies
on the question of land rights at various levels. Land, being a subject on
the concurrent as well as State list under Schedule VII of the Constitution,
bears inherent complexities in India, especially on counts of policy and law
making, governance and the functioning of the administrative machinery.
Schedules V1 and VI2 of the Indian Constitution provide separate provi-
sions for land rights, covering different parts of India. Both the schedules
differ in the form of their concept, structure for governance, authorities
for decision making and problem solving concerning holding and use of
land. The structure and procedures of land governance of the Scheduled
Areas (SAs) have been carved out based on the stipulated criteria and add
to its intricacy. This lack of uniformity in the structure and procedures is
one of the major challenges for effective coordination between different
agencies and has resulted in neglect of some community claims, as also rein-
forced inequalities in landholding among the weaker sections of the society.
Critical issues regarding forest management, recognition of their custom-
ary land/property laws, local governance mechanism and its interface with
PESA (Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Area) Act) 1996, budgetary
allocation, utilisation and coordination among different administrative and
operational structures need serious attention of the state. Mainly four types
of responses can be observed from different parts of India. The Bhoodan
and Gramdan movements aimed to bring in philanthropic and social har-
mony. A protest resulting in violent conflicts by the neglected communities
in order to assert their claims to land was yet another approach. The pro-
moters of land rights opted for influencing policy making and legal action.
They have expanded the right to land from land ownership, adding other
dimensions such as holding of land, access to land, control and manage-
ment of land, and usufruct rights based on land use and citizens’ identifica-
tion with the land. Each right to land has multiple dimensions, which have
an internal hierarchy based on priorities and procedures. Other than land
acquisition, problems like land grabbing, illegal land transactions and ample
legal cases on ownership or holding land are clubbed as ‘commodification’
of land as well as violation of land rights. Thus, any subject related to land
ownership, use, acquisition and allocation of land opens up a plethora of
issues.
The neoliberal state has enacted laws and policies since the early 1990s
that reveal the dual character of the state in dealing with the question of
land rights. The period from 1950 to 1980 focused on the agenda of land
reforms and land acquisition for construction of dams and other develop-
ment projects. As land reforms were considered as a tool for equity and
poverty alleviation by the state, it resulted into moderate redistribution of

2
 INTRODUCTION

Ceiling Surplus land among the erstwhile cultivators or the landless popula-
tion; however, acquisition of land for dams and other development projects
continued and was justified in the name of ‘public purpose’ and ‘national
development’. A small portion of the displaced population was resettled
subsequently; some residents faced multiple displacements. Official data
on the redistribution of Ceiling Surplus land is available, but there is a
dearth of official data on the issue of displacement and resettlement. The
period 1981–2000 witnessed consolidation of power and politics of land
through changes in procedural aspects of land governance such as revi-
sion of tax and revenue, land record modernisation programme, changes in
procedure for land transaction, including registration fee and stamp duty,
and land allocation for industrialisation along with infrastructure building
and development. This phase, in preparing a ground for the next phase,
that is, adoption of New Economic Policy, did not deal effectively with the
residual problems of the previous phase, namely, issues of displacement and
resettlement, changes brought in class-caste equations, and pattern and
claims of landholding in the absence of reliable land records. From 2001
onwards, land acquisition was accelerated, mainly for large-scale infrastruc-
ture projects of the private sector. Land was given on lease for contract
and corporate farming initially through the Executive Orders, and later
new laws were enacted for the similar purposes. For instance, initially, the
Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and Special Investment Regions (SIR) were
announced and later SEZ Act, 2005 and the Right to Fair Compensation
and Transparency’ in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement
Act 2013 (LARR 2013) were enacted. However, enactment of the Sched-
uled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest
Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) and the National Draft Policy on Land Reform
2013 (NDPLR) gave a different face to the Indian state for land rights.
As such, land reform has been stalled since the late 1980s in many
States. The Indian government has addressed various issues related to
the agrarian economy, productivity and equity at different points of time,
mainly through appointment of expert committees.3 These committees
have studied the structural issues of the agrarian model such as tenancy
and sub-tenancy, factors contributing to alienation of lands of the Sched-
uled Tribes (tribals) and Scheduled Castes (dalits), issues of governance
and government policies related to land, land management through mod-
ernisation of land records, use of common property resources (CPR) and
issues related to conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural use.
The recommendations of these committees have focused on equitable
agrarian relation as goals, accepting the fact that ‘land reform is part of
our national psyche’.

3
 VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY

Nevertheless, two important questions have remained unattended in the

policy-framing arena and the structural analysis of the land reform – first,
land reform as equity measure and its impact have been analysed in terms
of peasantry, mainly referring to class. But redistribution of land as a pro-
ductive asset and social mobility brings in caste dimension as an analytical
unit. Since each State government has implemented land reform sepa-
rately, regional dimension also became important as an analytical unit to
understand the impact of land reform. Examples can be cited of ‘Operation
Barga’ in West Bengal as a prospective policy measure, and Kerala as an
‘exemplary model’ implied to know the impact of land reform from the
perspective of class-caste-gender and region. Similarly, how do we explain
armed forces, actions of the Ranveer Sena and violence in Bihar? Moreover,
some regions displayed an increase in tenancy and reverse tenancy, mainly
because the land redistributed under the land reforms were not cultivated
by the landholder. Such unanticipated phenomenon has raised questions
about the viability of agriculture on one hand but the increasing value of
land as an asset, use of land and its relevance on the other. The joint land-
holdings were shifted to patrilineal holdings that raised questions about the
manner in which and to what extent this phenomenon was influenced by
the patriarchal structures and practices.
The three acts – SEZ, 2005, FRA, 2006 and LARR, 2013, along with a
policy draft – NDPLR, 2013, and the changes in administrative functioning
in some States of India are the pointers for the discourse on land rights in
India. The transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy has cre-
ated a constant as well as increasing demand for land allocation to various
industrial units and corporate units. It has also posed several questions on
the state’s priorities from the perspective of land rights. Though the state
promotes industrial economy as a viable and promising model for growth,
it has to prove its robustness vis-à-vis an agrarian economy model on many
counts. Since land is a resource base needed by both the development para-
digms, how do we prove the viability of one model vis-à-vis the other?
What are the ways and approaches to answer such a complex question? In
this debate, the internal and persistent problems of an agrarian economy
have not been addressed effectively. The official data on landholding and
land under cultivation for food production for over a decade shows minor
changes. The extent of land acquisition by the state is not reflected in these
sets of official data related to land. Right from the first Five Year Plan, the
need for correct and up-to-date land records has been stressed; yet the state
has not been successful in updating land records and creating a multipur-
pose database on land use, land acquisition, displacement and rehabilita-
tion and resettlement. The land dependents and promoters of land rights
are feeling threatened with extensive land acquisition by the state. The

4
 INTRODUCTION

dispossession of land or loss of land is interpreted as a process of impover-

ishment, uprootedness and alienation of the displaced, the irreversible use
of land, consequent conflicts and forced migration in search of livelihood.
These landholders wish to influence policymaking that promotes minimal
acquisition of land as also minimal displacement, prevention of transfer of
agricultural land or its irreversible use of land, etc. The problems of tenancy
and reverse tenancy, sharecropping and violation of land rights and large
chunks of land given to corporate entities on contract for cash crops have
persisted to be a structure of exploitation and perpetrating the vicious cycle
of poverty.
How do we comprehend and present such multilayered, intricate pro-
cesses and various forces at work in different States of India from the per-
spective of land rights? Can we simply say that the former set of processes
seemed to be a fallout of selective actions by the neoliberal state, which
reinforces history, leaving the ownership of large chunks of land in the
hands of a few? Or do we say that such processes and forces create grounds
that negate, suppress and/or violate land rights across India? Or do we
argue that the latter set of processes redefine land rights and expand the
scope of land rights?
The existing gulf between the conception of land rights and ensuring
land rights designate three elements and processes that need to be looked
into: first, land laws as a priori requirements for land rights; second, land
management institutions as implementing agencies and third, the ability
and readiness of these institutions as well as the forces and processes that
influence and control these institutions. There is a dearth of data and ana-
lytical writings on the changes in land management and its impact on ensur-
ing land rights. How can the changes in procedures for tax and revenue
collection, modernisation of land records and other changes be interlinked
and how does one influence the others? How do these changes affect the
land rights of Indian citizens? Can the computerisation of land records
bring about radical changes in ensuring land rights without survey, resur-
vey and settlement of land records? Are these procedures able to withstand
political or economic pressures vis-à-vis promoting people’s aspirations for
landholding? Are they able to bring in transparency and control corrup-
tion or manipulation of land records? How do they deal with the massive
transfer4 of agricultural and forestland and change in use of land, the con-
stantly increasing alienation of land among tribals and dalits, land grab-
bing and regularisation of illegal encroachments? How can coordination
between different project authorities and land management agencies be
ensured? How do these agencies maintain records about how many dis-
placed persons lost their livelihoods and whether they are duly compensated
and resettled or not?

5
 VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY

II
This present volume is an outcome of a national level seminar on ‘Right to
land and its potentials for social transformation’, organised by the Indian
Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, in June 2014. The seminar had broadly
focused on six concerns (themes) of right to land and social transformation.
This volume continues the focus on land rights with similar themes embed-
ded: (i) issues of and challenges faced by ‘land dependents’; (ii) revisiting
land reforms from the perspective of social justice; (iii) reviewing existing
policies and laws; (iv) people’s movements on the land question; (v) issues
and challenges of land governance; and (vi) land economics and land use
for industrial and agrarian.5
This volume is an interface between different points of debates that have
emerged from the structural analysis on the question of land rights and the
newly emerging analytical categories and challenges for land rights. The
chapters have been contributed by academicians, researchers, bureaucrats
and social activists. Each chapter in this volume in a way has revisited the
land question with a focus on land rights. Eight chapters represent regional
specificity. Most have addressed four crosscutting concerns: gender, caste,
class and region (State). As such, the chapters are not strictly organised
under the themes mentioned, as many issues and concerns are overlapping,
but they have been introduced under a theme.
In the discourse of land ownership and land use, mostly the landless are
considered to be the only indirect beneficiaries. In reality, common land or
CPRs means subsistence to many social groups. Therefore, ‘land depen-
dents’ as a group has remained almost non-existent in the policymaking
and legal arena regime. This group is a construct; the term is expanded
to include dependents on private land as well as the common lands. It
incorporates – tenants, sharecroppers, those who have taken land on lease
for their livelihood, agriculture labourers, pastoralists, workers in the min-
ing sector, persons engaged in fishing and the unorganised labour in differ-
ent industries that are engaged in land-based activities, for example, brick
making and construction. There are three significant observations regard-
ing ‘land dependents’: first, there is no agency that gives voice to the suf-
fering of the land dependents and fights for the rights of landless labourers
working in informal sectors. Second, there is no major success story of this
group where their land rights are ensured. Third, the SAs as location and
tribals as the primary inhabitants of these areas require critical analysis in
order to ensure land rights of tribals. The trajectory of right to land, cul-
tural norms, practices and governance structure should ideally go hand in
hand in ensuring the tribals’ land rights, but that has not been achieved.

6
 INTRODUCTION

The theme ‘Issues of Land Dependents’ incorporates six chapters; each

chapter addresses a separate social group and their varied economic issues
in different geographic regions, and also diverse types of lands under use
to articulate concerns of the ‘land dependents’. Based on the narratives of
the labourers, Anand Chakravarti describes the dismal living conditions
of dalit landless agricultural labourers of a village in Bihar in Chapter 2.
These narratives demonstrate the perennial state of crisis that is intrinsic to
their lives. Though based on only one village, they represent in microscopic
form the conditions of the labourers as shaped by wider social and political
forces in Bihar as a whole. These forces explain the failure of the state to
implement the existing land reforms. Anand illustrates the organic linkages
between rural power and the state machinery, which works as an instrument
in maintaining the status quo, favouring dominant castes cum classes. Thus,
it violates the fundamental commitment to social, economic and political
justice embodied by the Constitution.
In Chapter 3, R. Umamaheshwari engages herself with concepts of
land, river and forests in the course of several conversations with com-
munities in the Godavari-Sabari region. She explores various ideas and
‘constructs’ how truths and myths are created around land, in what way
the notional value of land is promoted, in what manner the use of land
is justified in the name of projects for ‘scientific’ development and selec-
tive use of land as space and place. Uma concludes the chapter saying
that land, river and forests hold memories and histories of communities
formed through centuries of dialogue. Loss of any of these results in
the loss of ‘history’, and once this loss is ‘inflicted’ from the above, the
uprooting of certain communities from democracy is permanent, in both
physical and metaphorical terms.
Soma K. Parthasarthy’s Chapter 4 is on politics of commons, which
has evolved into a web of contestations between different social groups in
Rajasthan. Soma undertakes policy analyses to show how the commons are
shrinking due to intrusion and enclosure by the state and an onslaught by
market forces. She further examines the contours of the contestations and
transitions from the perspectives of caste, class and gender relations. Soma
concludes saying that these assertions of power through hegemonic gover-
nance undermine the rights of traditionally land-dependent communities
and that gender and tribe are sites of multiple dispossessions that threaten
not only the rights to resources but also the right to life.
In Chapter 5, Vidhya Das discusses a pertinent question: how do we look
at tribals’ development and their rights? The influx of various actors and
factors has negatively worked on the tribal-forest relationship, tribal culture
and their life world. Vidhya analyses various land laws and laws for tribals’

7
 VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY

well-being in Odisha and illustrates the manner in which laws, government

machinery, market forces and global economic forces have weakened the
legal, political and social structure, which contribute to rampant land alien-
ation among the tribals.
Chapter 6, jointly written by R. Vijay and Y. Sreenivasulu, examines the
nature and composition of land lease arrangements in India in the context
of an increasing trend towards the growth of capitalist farmers in Indian
agriculture. Post 1970s, the share of land under tenancy has been decreas-
ing, and the nature of contract is shifting from shared tenancy to fixed rental
contracts. A revival in the number of households engaged in/dependent on
agricultural labour entering the land lease market, in the recent period, in
nearly all the States of India has been observed, especially in Punjab and
Haryana that show an increase in tenancy. This new form of tenancy has
arisen in the irrigated areas, which is due to the diversification of cultivating
households out of agriculture and becoming absentee landlords and lack of
diversification options to the poorer households, thereby forcing them to
enter the land lease market.
Three major aspects of land reforms – redistribution of surplus land to
the landless for agriculture as well as shelter, tenancy reforms and land
consolidation – have been stalled since the late 1980s by different State
governments. Yet, land reform has remained an implicit aspiration of many
landless as also land-dependent families across the country. The NDPLR
2013 has echoed these aspirations. For implementation of second genera-
tion land reform or exercising of land rights, it is necessary to examine
whether the state or the state machinery perceives land reform as people’s
aspirations and whether they are equipped to respond to people’s asso-
ciation with land as identity and culture or not. The question also arises
whether the government machinery can facilitate a process of reordering
of caste–class equations, alter social and state power equations or not. The
second theme, ‘Revisiting Land Reforms from Social Justice Perspective’,
comprises a set of four chapters, dealing with political economy and unan-
ticipated outcomes of land reforms in different States of India.
Mangesh Kulkarni’s Chapter 7 focuses on the political economy of land
reforms. It dwells on laws, policies and schemes meant to establish an
egalitarian pattern of land ownership and/or to boost agricultural produc-
tivity; civil society initiatives; militant movements aimed at overthrowing
exploitative agrarian structures and practices; and the impact of the New
Economic Policy on the agricultural sector with a particular reference to
farmers’ suicides and acquisition of land for SEZ. The chapter uses the
analytical lenses of caste, class and gender to probe the concepts underlying
these interventions, strategies and tangible outcomes in the context of the
changing political economy of development.

8
 INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 8, Chandrashekhar B. Damle captures the changing agrarian

relations in Dakshin Kannada a districts of Karnataka over the last 25 years,
in response to the implementation of the tenancy legislation and Land
Ceiling Act. His chapter describes the unanticipated consequences of first
generation land reforms and the factors that have contributed to varied
trends in post-land reforms arena. While bringing land to market for diverse
purposes, new phenomena have been observed, such as fragmentation of
holdings, entry to easy profit making non-agricultural occupations and land
alienation, and cultivable lands left uncultivated due to scarcity of labour.
These new experiences have transformed caste, gender and labour dynam-
ics in villages.
In Chapter 9, Prashant K. Trivedi describes how land reform was designed
and carried out in Uttar Pradesh as a result of which, the upper caste zamin-
dars continued to be the biggest land owners; tenants who purchased land
or benefited from land reforms mostly belonged to OBCs and a section
of dalits remained functionally landless agricultural labourers. He further
argues that whatever is happening in the name of land reforms is more of
land management; the focus is on efficient use of land resources and not on
the ownership pattern of the land. Prashant concludes the chapter saying
that the emerging land reforms discourse challenges the state’s unfettered
control over natural resources at the expense of livelihood and life of local
communities and patrilineal and patriarchal control over land.
Suma Scaria revisits land reform to share the Kerala experience in Chap-
ter 10. While referring to NDPLR 2013, she looks at the situation in Kerala
apropos to land reform, which may provide valuable inputs for the formula-
tion of policy regarding second generation land reforms. Kerala stands as
a ‘model’ for land reform, as does West Bengal. Kerala has been successful
in bestowing landownership to tenants and homestead rights to hutment
dwellers. However, it has also produced many unexpected outcomes, such
as a decline in agriculture, changes in the ‘character’ of land and conferring
ownership rights to non-agriculturists. The question of land rights of land-
less dalits, tribals and women has remained unaddressed. The recent violent
struggles and forced occupation of land by dalits and tribals in different
parts of Kerala shows the urgent need for the marginalised communities to
address the issues of land rights.
The third theme, ‘Reviewing Existing Policies and Laws’ encompasses
three chapters. In Chapter 11, Anusha interrogates the concept of eminent
domain that makes the state undisputed owner of the ‘common lands’.
The chapter suggests an alternative imagination of land and land rights
and challenges the concept of ED. In this initiative, land carries a broader
connotation in terms of culture and identity and not only as a source of
livelihood. The chapter has derived an alternative vision of land as a prism

9
 VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY

of identity, and based on the land struggle movements in the Potka block
in Jharkhand. It further describes how the adivasi diction vocabulary tends
to question the concept of eminent domain, saying ‘land is our existence’.
Walter Fernandes’s Chapter 12 focuses on LARR 2013, the loss of live-
lihood resultant from the loss of land and consequent dispossessions and
lack of participations in decision making. This Act has focused on transpar-
ency in compensation and rehabilitation and resettlement issues, which is
considered progressive, but in reality, it epitomises the reductionism of a
wider scope of land rights. As the market approach makes land out to be
a commodity in the form of a monetised item in cash nexus economy, it
ignores non-monetised aspects such as indirect social and economic sup-
port from land, memories and a sense of alienation, and sidelining polity,
role of civil society and democratic processes. This chapter describes the
interplay among economic, political and bureaucratic forces through his-
torical analysis related to enactment of this Act, and the civil society’s efforts
to find alternatives from the perspective of land rights. The author ends
the paper by looking at the implications of the changes that the National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) government tried to introduce in the LARR
2013 through three Ordinances but had to abandon for lack of a majority.
The third chapter (Chapter 13), written by two authors, Meenal Tatpati
and Neema Pathak-Broome, associated with Kalpvriksh, focuses largely
on forestland and resource rights through the Community Forest Rights
provisions of the FRA, 2006. This chapter describes the potential of these
provisions towards impacting forest governance and bringing about social
transformation. It briefly shares how tardy implementation of the act, the
indifferent administrative mechanism, lack of political will and the larger eco-
nomic agenda are hampering vital potentials of the FRA. The chapter explores
the assertions and attempts of the forest dwellers in order to understand the
economic, political and social factors impacting the implementation of the act.
Studying people’s responses against dispossession of land and consequent
land rights is important, because ‘possession’ of land reflects ‘a sense of
belongingness’ among its occupants. Strategies like protest, resistance and
dissent are mostly considered ‘contentious’ and destructive actions by the
State and government machinery but their potential in identifying trans-
formative strategies and action ensuring land rights needs to be explored.
Social movements have played a significant role in ensuring land rights,
especially landholding and land management aspects. However, govern-
ment machinery has not supported these movements wholeheartedly due
to many reasons.
The fourth theme, ‘People’s Movement on Land Question’ covers two
chapters. In Chapter 14, Sujit Kumar examines the manner in which land
acquisition throughout the country has provoked ‘land wars’ by different

10
 INTRODUCTION

communities and groups. Though existing literature does provide an

insightful analysis of the movements, seldom do these records provide an
answer to the question of why communities and groups adopt different
modus operandi of protest in response to the same phenomena of land dis-
possession. He undertakes a comparative analysis of movements against land
acquisition in Nagri in Jharkhand, Niyamgiri in Odisha and Kudankulam in
Tamil Nadu. Sujit argues that the people’s ‘self-perception’ as well as their
‘imagination of the state’ plays a major role in making them adopt distinct
approaches of protest.
Since the state has supremacy in exercising all powers related to land, land
governance is a crucial issue for ensuring land rights. An efficient and effec-
tive ‘Land Governance System’ is at the core of this concern for ensuring
land rights. Had the land administration been functional with updated and
reliable land records and trained revenue officials who are responsive to land
questions under contention, the existing power politics would have been
dealt with efficiently and with more astuteness. Land governance covers a
range of issues – land-related laws, rules, and processes and structures –
through which decisions are made about access to land and its use, the
manner in which decisions are implemented and enforced and the way that
competing interests in land are managed. Recent policies have shifted land
governance to land management, further shrinking them to modernisation
of land records programme, in support of expeditious land acquisitions and
land allocation for the industries and augmentation of existing infrastruc-
ture. Some limitations of the existing land governance system have come to
the fore. For instance, land acquisition under SEZ contradicts and on many
occasions overrides institutions of local governance – the Panchayat Raj.
Trends of increase in reverse tenancy, spread of share cropping practices
and expansion of corporate faming are not addressed effectively under the
existing land governance procedures.
Parag Cholkar’s Chapter 15 begins with the land scenario soon after
independence as a reference to context in order to argue the need for land
ceiling and Bhoodan. He provides necessary statistics on land donated
under Bhoodan and compares Bhoodan’s contribution to land redistri-
bution by the state and also addresses the existing misconceptions about
Bhoodan. Parag provides details about Gramdan – historical to the present
situation – to show its relevance and as the need of the hour, while shar-
ing Vinoba Bhave’s vision, ideology-based actions and how his leadership
made a difference to the land scenario. He concludes the chapter saying
that Gramdan is the only way to ensure land rights to all.
Two chapters contributed by senior bureaucrats are part of the theme,
‘Issues and Challenges of Land Governance’. B. B. Srivastava maps out the
various components and the role of land governance in Chapter 16. Land

11
 VARSHA BHAGAT-GANGULY

governance, synonymous with land and tenancy reforms primarily, was par-
tially successful due to imperfect planning, faulty implementation, tortuous
and tardy process of conflict resolution. He contends that the conflict resolu-
tion mechanism could not function effectively because of lack of ‘knowledge’
and ‘understanding’ about ‘LAND’, and the land issues are complex, problems
are constantly evolving, critical behavioural changes in citizens, land profes-
sionals and the organizational culture of the land administrators, structures are
fragmented and multiple layered, and badly managed land records. Further,
he analyses the National Land Records Modernisation Programme and the
reasons for its present status. In conclusion, he shares some important remedial
measures, such as digitised land records database, both textual and spatial. In
Chapter 17, Pradeep Nayak examines the Modernisation of Land Records Pro-
gramme of the Indian state, which is touted as the world’s largest programme
of land records modernisation. He describes the complexity of the land records
system and the historical shifts in public policy on land records management, by
analysing all the Five Year Plans, the history of land records system, as well as
the programmes for land records management. He argues that the capacity of
the Indian state to undertake land reform measures in the contemporary neo-
liberal paradigm of development raises many questions, mainly due to apolitical
state and the indifference of the revenue officials in carrying out basic functions
of land records as well as implementation of the land reform.

Acknowledgment
I am thankful to Aditee Banerjee for language editing of this chapter.

Notes
1 Parts of nine States – Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Himachal
Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan – are
covered under Schedule V.
2 Parts of four States – Assam, Tripura, Mizoram and the whole of Meghalaya –
are covered under Schedule VI.
3 The committees are known by their chairpersons’ names – Kumarappa Com-
mittee (1948–49); Wadhwa Committee (1989); Appu Committee (1996);
and committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Tasks of Land
Reforms (2009).
4 As per one of the estimates by Centre for Science and Environment, between
2007 and 2011, 8,734 project clearance and 0.198 million hectare for-
est land was diverted. A total of 830,244 hectares of forestland has been
diverted during from 1981 to 2011.
5 Three presentations as part of this theme – the issue of sharecropping and
revisiting ‘Operation Barga’ of West Bengal, corporate and contract farming
in India, and violation of land rights based on analysis of about 4,000 legal
cases–during the seminar were very useful in understanding forms of viola-
tion of land rights but they are not incorporated in this volume.

12
 Part I

ISSUES OF LAND
DEPENDENTS
This page intentionally left blank
 2
‘IF WE HAD LAND,
WE WOULD BE HUMAN’
The implications of landlessness in a
Bihar village

Anand Chakravarti

Preliminary observations
The quotation included in the title of this chapter captures, quintessentially,
the implications of being a landless labourer in Muktidih, a village in Rohtas
district (south-west Bihar).1 The village is approximately 50 km north-east
by road from the district headquarters at Sasaram. The quotation is part of
the following statement, recorded by me in 2001, showing how landless-
ness condemns agricultural labourers (also designated by the term ‘under-
class’) to a sub-human existence2:

Ours is a miserable life. We have no kheth-badhar [land for grow-

ing crops and vegetables] . . . If we had land, we would be human.
Our lives are worse than those of insects, for even insects can take care
of their needs (emphasis added).

Based on a small number of narratives of some labourers, I will present

a synoptic view of the continual state of crisis that inscribes the lives of the
landless in the village.3
The landless labourers of Muktidih belong mostly to two dalit castes,
Paswan and Bhuiya, together constituting approximately 25 per cent of its
households. The livelihood of most of them depends on working for the
landowners of the village and its neighbourhood, comprising Brahmins,
Rajputs, Kayasths, Yadavs and Koeris. While working for wages is the prin-
cipal means of livelihood for a majority of the labourers, in recent years ten-
ancy has become a supplementary source of food supply for several Paswan
households. However, as shown later, tenancy as a means of livelihood is

15
 ANAND CHAKRAVARTI

fraught with uncertainty because of insecure leases and the adverse terms
governing them.
The grievances of the labourers reflect implicitly their sense of betrayal at
being abandoned by their sarkar (an expression that may be interpreted as a
reference to the Indian state) in spite of over 60 years of independence from
colonial rule. I strongly believe that my interpretation of their grievances in
terms of betrayal by the state flows from my empathy with their perception
of the world around them.4 Empathy is a powerful means of comprehend-
ing the lives of the people forming the subject of one’s study because it
demands from the researcher the capacity to ‘think [their] thoughts and
feel [their] feelings . . .’ (Stark 1950: 19, quoted in Srinivas 1972: 157).
Although I have done fieldwork on other occasions during my profes-
sional career, which includes showing how agricultural labour is exploited
under a capitalist regime (Chakravarti 2001), empathy has never dominated
my enquiries in the same way as in the present study. In the earlier study
referred to here, I interviewed agricultural labourers to collect informa-
tion on the conditions of their employment without consciously trying
to unravel their thoughts and feelings on how they were treated by their
employers. Thus, the labourers I spoke with were perhaps only the means
of generating data for my research on class relations, or for advancing my
academic agenda. As empathy is the guiding principle in the present study,
I have felt impelled to delve into the fundamental causes underlying the
grievances of the labourers by locating these grievances in the wider social,
political and economic forces that transcend the local situation. As argued
by Harriss, village society is a ‘conjuncture of much wider processes and
relationships’ (1982: 17). Therefore, the underclass in Muktidih is land-
less and less than human not merely because their local dominant caste
employers are privileged to control the means of production and deny them
a human existence; the fundamental causes of their grievances, and those of
their counterparts elsewhere in rural Bihar,5 are located also in the failure
of the state of Bihar to implement land reforms, which is attributable to the
combination of caste and class forces sustaining state power and perpetuat-
ing a regime that denies social justice to the marginalised. These issues will
be discussed later.
I have done five short spells of fieldwork in the village since March
2001 (I last visited the village in November 2013). Having done intensive
fieldwork in rural India on two occasions before 2001 (Chakravarti 1975,
2001), the total period of stay adding up to around a year in each site, I
must admit that my visits to Muktidih since 2001 do not at all add up to
an in-depth picture of the community. In fact, much of my information
is located in the scattered narratives of the landless recorded by me dur-
ing each visit. However, I maintain that the narratives, though limited in

16
 THE IMPLICATIONS OF LANDLESSNESS IN A BIHAR VILLAGE

number, covering various dimensions of the suffering induced by adverse

social circumstances, do project a bigger picture, which, as mentioned ear-
lier, is an indictment of the state in Bihar for denying social, economic and
political justice to the landless in general.
It is significant that even a small tract of land (as small as half a bigha6) in
the region where Muktidih is located (covering the districts of Rohtas and
Bhojpur) is capable of yielding an abundant harvest. The region falls under
the command area of the Sone canal,7 and, according to an informant, is
popularly referred to as the rice bowl (dhan katora) of Bihar. The same per-
son asserted that it was not unusual for a bigha of land in this region to yield
between ‘50 and 60 maunds of paddy’ (which is equivalent to between
2,869 and 3,443 kg of paddy per acre).8
The livelihood chances of casual labourers, especially those who are
wholly dependent on the local agrarian economy, are extremely precarious.
The local agrarian economy generates employment annually for approxi-
mately 210 days for men and 160 days for women. As one Paswan infor-
mant said, ‘Agriculture is not like a company, which generates work round
the year’ (emphasis added). Besides, by all accounts, the wages hardly meet
the daily requirements, even during the periods of employment. Therefore,
to cope with the deficits for running a household, especially during periods
of unemployment, labourers are compelled to take loans in cash or in kind
at truly exorbitant rates of interest (usually 5 per cent per month for cash
and 50 per cent for kind). It was common to find that they barely managed
to pay back even the interest to pre-empt it from becoming compounded.9
As a state of chronic deficit marks the domestic economy of labourers,
it inevitably manifests itself in the quality of food, clothing and housing.
Labourers have a clear notion of a good diet, which includes bhat, dal,
tarkari, dudh, aur dahi (rice, lentils, vegetables, milk and curds). They
point out that only jamidar (implying substantial landowners) are privi-
leged to enjoy such items. Even if a labourer accesses some vegetables, or a
small quantity of dal, it is extremely unlikely that a meal includes both items
together. For the second meal of the day, neither vegetables nor dal may
be affordable, and hence the evening meal for the entire family typically
comprises only rice mixed with the water left over after cooking it (madh),
with salt added for flavour. Further, during the long periods of unemploy-
ment, when access to food is acutely difficult, the quantity of madh-bhat
(rice gruel) is increased artificially by doubling the quantity of water to cope
with the needs of the household for two meals. The struggle against hunger
(pet ki bhuk) is thus inscribed in the lives of agricultural labourers.
In the light of the precarious livelihood chances of labourers, contingent
circumstances have a disastrous impact on their lives, as shown by the fol-
lowing narratives.

17
 ANAND CHAKRAVARTI

Narratives of despair

The cost of sickness: Lallan Bhuiya

Lallan Bhuiya, a landless labourer, developed a fever at the commencement
of the paddy-transplanting season in June–July 2001. He attempted to sal-
vage a working day by visiting the local health sub-centre for treatment,
but his hopes were dashed to the ground because of incompetent medical
attention. Desperately seeking relief, he travelled to Itimha (a large village,
about 8 km away) to consult a doctor there. His feverish condition made it
difficult for him to travel alone, and so his wife accompanied him. Thus, she
too lost a working day. As both husband and wife had lost the day’s wages,
it adversely affected the food supply of the household on that particular
day (Lallan’s household included three dependent children). However, the
problem of earning for the household continued to afflict Lallan even after
that. Though he had recovered after being treated at Itimha, the debilitat-
ing impact of the illness on his physical strength made it impossible for him
to perform manual work for several weeks. As a consequence, he lost the
wages of at least half the paddy-transplanting season.

Some negative consequences of non-agricultural

employment: Duleshwar Paswan
Duleshwar Paswan, whom I met in October 2001, was at that time among
the few landless labourers who aspired to improve their livelihood chances
by performing non-agricultural work outside the village. He was employed
as a labourer at a rice mill approximately 30 km west of Muktidih, where
he lived most of the time. Thus, his wife became solely responsible for run-
ning the household, which included five dependent children. The problem
of subsistence was aggravated because of her indifferent health, deterring
her from performing agricultural work on a regular basis. The compul-
sions of Duleshwar’s family situation – an absent father and a sick mother –
condemned his children to live in a state of continual neglect. Indeed, for
the children of landless labourers in Bihar generally, there is a thin line
between living in a state of neglect and becoming victims of fatal neglect.
The death of Saboori, one of Duleshwar’s daughters, is a poignant example.
Saboori contracted jaundice at the age of four. Though her condition
deteriorated as the days went by, her mother was too preoccupied with
looking after two infant children to pay serious attention to her health. On a
day when Duleshwar happened to visit his family, he found Saboori in a crit-
ical condition. He immediately carried her to consult an unregistered medi-
cal practitioner (UMP) at Bagnaha, a neighbouring village. The medication
prescribed by the UMP had to be procured from a chemist, but the nearest

18
 THE IMPLICATIONS OF LANDLESSNESS IN A BIHAR VILLAGE

medical outlet happened to be in Itimha (about 10 km from Bagnaha). The

UMP was kind enough to loan Duleshwar his bicycle to procure the medi-
cines and agreed to watch over Saboori as her father rushed off. Tragically,
she died before her father returned with the medicines.

Surviving precariously on consumption loans:

Harender and Jawan Ram Paswan
The most critical period during a year for landless labourers covers the two
months preceding the harvesting season for paddy, which commences in
mid-November. This period, typically referred to as ‘Kuar-Kartik’ (cover-
ing the months Kuar [Aashwin] and Kartik, conforming to the local lunar
calendar [mid-September to mid-November]), follows the intense employ-
ment of labour for paddy transplanting, which ends during August. The
wages earned during the season for paddy transplanting barely suffice for
the survival of labouring households much beyond the season. At best,
their earnings enable them to scrape through for a few weeks. The ordeal
of a landless labourer’s household begins immediately afterwards, for there
is practically no wage work till the commencement of the paddy harvest-
ing season. The intensity of the ordeal depends on the amount saved from
the wages of paddy transplanting, which varies according to the number
of working members in a household. It is only logical that a household
in which both husband and wife are capable of working would be better
placed materially than one where only one of the spouses earns. Not infre-
quently, the man of the family happens to be the sole bread earner because
his wife has to opt out of the labour force because of pregnancies or the
constraints of child rearing. The statements of Harender Paswan and his
younger brother Jawan Ram illuminate these points.
Harender, rare among the labourers of his tola (settlement) because he
maintained an account-book recording his principal transactions, despair-
ingly reported to me in November 2009 that his household (then compris-
ing five members) usually exhausted its supply of food grain by the middle
of September every year (he and his wife were the two earning members).
From then onwards, till the beginning of the period for harvesting paddy,
his household had to subsist by borrowing either cash or food grain at truly
exorbitant rates of interest. For example, on 10 October 2009 he had bor-
rowed Rs. 3,000 at an interest of 5 per cent per month to procure provi-
sions. The items included 2 quintals of rice, 18.65 kg of wheat, cooking oil,
salt, spices, washing soda, soap and a few clothes.
For much of the lean period, rice gruel alone constituted the diet for
Harender’s household. While lentils were out of question, even cheap vege-
tables (such as ‘alu-baingan’ [potatoes and brinjal]) were rarely consumed.

19
 ANAND CHAKRAVARTI

A fact to be underscored is that during this period the only meals (bhojan)
are at mid-day and in the evening, as nashta (‘breakfast’) in the morning
is out of question. Harender was emphatic that, for an average landless
labourer, nashta is a luxury limited to phases in the agricultural cycle when
there is a heavy demand for labour by landowners, during which the wages
include meals (nashta and bhojan). Therefore, as stated by Harender, in the
course of the lean period, when an agricultural labourer needs to attend to
a task connected to his own household (such as the repair of his dwelling
or the irrigation of a leased-in tract), he ‘proceeds with the job on hand on
an empty stomach (khaali pet) after a face wash’.
I do not have corresponding information on the consumption loans
taken by Harender’s brother Jawan Ram, but, based on some of his state-
ments, there can be little doubt that the latter suffered from more compel-
ling material deprivations. He was at that time the only earning member
of his family – comprising his wife and five small children. For several years
previously his wife had only notionally been part of the agricultural labour
force because of frequent pregnancies and the demands of child rearing.
He said that he found it practically impossible to borrow enough money
or grain to cope with the dietary requirements of his family. As there were
many mouths to feed, the volume of rice gruel was routinely doubled by
simply increasing the quantity of water for cooking. Even such devices
failed to satisfy the needs of Jawan Ram’s household consistently because
there were times when he and his wife slept on an empty stomach to spare
their children the ordeal of starving. He maintained that these deplorable
conditions were by no means unique to his household, for others simi-
larly placed in his class replicated the same situation. Indeed, many adults,
to whom consumption loans had been denied, concurred that they were
accustomed to sleeping on an empty stomach – sometimes for four days in
succession – after consuming a substantial quantity of water because there
was no means to procure food. The children of a labourer’s household in
distress, however, are usually saved from suffering in the same way because
some other household in the neighbourhood, which happens to have rela-
tively better access to food, provides, in good faith, the minimal kharcha
(money or its equivalent for essential needs). Such kharcha is redeemed
during the paddy-harvesting season.
The common thread running through the experiences of Harender and
his brother is that of hardship, debt and deprivation. The underclass in
Muktidih is constrained to cope with living without essential items that
they cannot afford. Their distress is tinged with envy of those in their
neighbourhood who possess the means to live without being perennially
in a state of want. For instance, Sumer Paswan, who is a schoolteacher, is
envied because, in Harender’s words, ‘Unka to poora maintain [sic] hota

20
 THE IMPLICATIONS OF LANDLESSNESS IN A BIHAR VILLAGE

hai’ (he is able to maintain himself fully – implying that he does not have
to live in want).

The tribulations of becoming a cultivator

It is a truism that the severe hardships that are endemic in the lives of
labourers are a direct consequence of landlessness, which compels those
whose only resource is their labour power to seek employment on grossly
unsatisfactory terms. In recent years, however, some changes have occurred
in the livelihood pattern of several Paswan landless labourers because they
have succeeded in leasing in small tracts of land from local landowners. In
qualitative terms, this implies an upward movement from working exclu-
sively for wages to working as cultivators. The impulse for this change was
an outcome of the rapport between members of the Paswan tola and their
Koeri neighbours, which was generated through their common partici-
pation in the activities of the left-wing party, Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist – Liberation) – henceforth, ‘Liberation’.10
Landless Koeris (as well as landless Yadavs) had been tenant cultivators
from as long as informants recall (‘lambe samay se’ [a long time]), which dis-
tinguished them from landless Paswan. Their principal maliks (‘landlords’)
were the traditional Brahmin, Kayasth and Rajput landowners of the area.
The political association between the Koeri and Paswan, as members of Lib-
eration, had an unintended impact on the livelihood chances of the latter.
Koeris accommodated the entry of Paswan as tenants into their ranks due
to their common party links. Indeed, in recent years Paswan have adopted
tenant cultivation in a big way. When I last visited the village in November
2013, informants reported that as many as 35 households (out of approxi-
mately 60 Paswan households) were practising cultivation as tenants.
Landless labourers pointed out that the impulse to lease in land is gen-
erated by the desire to become an autonomous producer of food grain,
instead of being wholly dependent on wage labour. The following is an
apt statement: ‘Doosre ke yahan kaatne nahin jaaenge; ham apna hi kheti
karenge’ (we will not harvest someone else’s crop; instead, we will do our
own cultivation).
However, as shown here, tenant cultivation does not have assured ben-
efits. Indeed, the enterprise entails a great deal of risk and uncertainty
because there is no assurance that a prospective tenant will actually get
a lease of land; further, even if he does, there is no certainty that the
lease will be continued in the future. Therefore, the cultivation of land
by a landless person is a deeply tantalizing experience, because an abrupt
return to the ranks of full-time casual labourers may happen at any time
in the future.

21
 ANAND CHAKRAVARTI

Enormous material risks are built into leasing in land at present. The
prevalent mode of settling a lease demands the payment, in advance, of
the entire rent in cash (nagad) – in May, before the commencement of the
paddy season. The lease covers both the kharif and rabi seasons. The rent in
2013 was Rs. 12,000 per bigha, an enormous sum of money for a landless
labourer.11 The magnitude of the rent inevitably cuts into the prospects of
deriving a fair benefit from leasing in land, as described here with reference
to paddy and wheat, the principal kharif and rabi crops respectively. Assum-
ing the sale price of paddy to be Rs. 500 per maund,12 the rent alone is
equivalent to 24 maunds of paddy (which is nearly 50 per cent of a satisfac-
tory yield of 50 maunds per bigha). The approximate cost of production
of paddy is Rs. 4,000 per bigha, or the equivalent of 8 maunds of paddy.
Thus, a cultivator has to produce at least 32 maunds of paddy per bigha to
break even. Even if the surplus, after deducting the costs mentioned above,
is around 15 maunds of paddy (assuming a good harvest), it is equivalent
to only Rs. 7,500 for an entire season’s effort stretching over a period of
6 months.13 It should be noted here that this amount is less than the rent
payable for leasing in a bigha of land. It is only by adding the limited gain
from the forthcoming wheat harvest that to some extent renders it possible
for a tenant to invest in a corresponding lease covering the next agricultural
cycle.
Tenants do not, generally speaking, derive any major commercial ben-
efit from the cultivation of wheat. The average yield was said to be about
17.5 maunds (6.5 quintals) per bigha, which carried a commercial value
of Rs. 6,500 in 2012–13 (at the rate of Rs. 1,000 per quintal). However,
the cost of production is around Rs. 3,000 per bigha, and therefore the
net gain is approximately Rs. 3,500 for the season. The cumulative ‘gain’
for a tenant cultivator operating a bigha of land during a year (covering
only the principal kharif and rabi crops) thus adds up to the equivalent of
Rs. 11,000. If this hypothetical tenant wishes to repeat leasing in a bigha
of land, he would be short of the rent by Rs. 1,000. Clearly, the attempted
transition from labouring for wages to cultivation as a tenant is fraught with
tremendous risk and uncertainty.
Prospective tenants have basically two options for raising the rent for
a lease: either by using the proceeds of the preceding year’s harvest or by
taking a loan. Both options impose considerable hardship on an aspiring
tenant, as revealed by the poignant responses to my queries on the subject,
which are summed up here:

If I want to do kheti [cultivation] the following year too, I will have

to put aside the proceeds of the paddy I harvested this year (usko ek
dam alag rakh denge), even though I may not have enough to run

22
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
to about two hundred young priests and theological students on “The
Personal Qualifications for a Minister of Religion.” The address was
in no important respect different from that which would be suitable on
the same subject for an audience of theological students in England
or the United States; nor did its reception and appropriation seem
any less thorough and sincere.
After inspecting the work in drawing and water-colours of which—so
the posted notice read—“An Exhibition is given in honour of ——,”
Mrs. Ladd returned to Tokyo; but I remained to carry out my purpose
of spending a full day and night among my priestly Buddhist friends.
In our many confidential talks while we were in the relations of
teacher and pupil, the latter had avowed his life-work to be the moral
reform and improved mental culture of the priesthood of his sect. It
had then seemed to me a bold, even an audacious undertaking. But
seeming audacity was quite characteristic of the youth of all those
very men who now, in middle life and old-age, are holding the posts
of leadership in Japan in a way to conserve the best results of the
earlier period of more rapid change. Besides, I knew well that my
pupil had the necessary courage and devotion; for he was not only a
priest but also a soldier, and had been decorated for his bravery in
the Chino-Japanese war. And again, toward the close of the Russo-
Japanese war, when he had been called out with the reserves, he
had once more left the position of priestly student and teacher to
take his place at arms in the defence of his country.
How wholesome and thoroughly educative of their whole manhood
was the training which was being given to these young temple boys,
I had abundant reason to know before leaving the Nichiren College
at Osaki. After tea and welcome-addresses by one of the teachers
and two of the pupils, followed by a response by the guest, an
exhibition of one side of this training was given in the large dining-
hall of the school. For as it was in ancient Greece, so it is now in
Japan; arms and music must not be neglected in the preparation to
serve his country of the modern Buddhist priest. Sword-dancing—
one of the chants which accompanied the action being Saigo’s
celebrated “death song”—and a duet performed upon a flute and a
harp constructed by the performer out of split bamboo and strings of
silk, followed by banzais for their guest, concluded the
entertainment.
Of the nine who sat down to dinner that evening in a private room
belonging to another building of the school, four besides the host
were priests of the Nichiren sect. They constituted the body of the
more strictly religious or theological instructors; the courses in
literature and the sciences being taught for the most part by
professors from the Imperial University or from the private university
founded by Japan’s great teacher of youth, the late Mr. Fukuzawa.
Of the priests the most conspicuous and communicative was proud
to inform me that he had been the chaplain of General Noghi at the
siege of Port Arthur. With reference to the criticisms passed at the
time upon that great military leader he said with evident emotion that
General Noghi was “as wise as he was undoubtedly brave.” This
same priest had also interesting stories to tell of his experiences in
China. In speaking of the ignorance of the teachers of religion in that
country he declared, that of the hundreds of Tâoist priests he had
met, the vast majority could not even read the Chinese ideographs
when he wrote them; and none of the numbers he had known could
make any pretence to scholarship. They were quite universally
ignorant, superstitious, and physically and morally filthy. Among the
Buddhist priests in China, however, the case was somewhat better;
for perhaps three or four in every ten could make some pretence of
education; and there were even a very few who were real scholars.
But neither Tâoists nor Buddhists had much influence for good over
the people; and “priest, priest,” was a cry of insult with which to
follow one. As to their sincerity, at one of the Tâoist temples he had
asked for meat and wine, but had been told that none could be had,
because they abstained religiously from both. But when he replied
that he had no scruples against either, but needed them for his
health and wished to pay well for them, both were so quickly
produced he knew they could not have come from far away. (I may
remark in this connection that if the experiences and habits of the
Chinese in Manchuria resemble at all closely the experiences and
customs of the Koreans in their own country, the unwillingness to
furnish accommodations to travelling strangers is caused rather by
the fear of having them requisitioned without pay than to any
scruples, religious or otherwise, as to what they themselves eat and
drink or furnish to others for such purposes).
The same subject which had been introduced at the priests-house,
on occasion of the all-night festival at Ikegami, was now brought
forward again. What had been my impressions received from the
spectacle witnessed at that time? When to the inquiry I made a
similar answer,—namely, that only a portion of the vast crowd
seemed to be sincere worshippers, but that with the exception of a
few rude young men in the procession, who appeared to have had
too much saké, I saw no immoral or grossly objectional features—all
the priests expressed agreement with my views. Where the
superstitions connected with the celebration were not positively
harmful, it was the policy of the reforming and progressive party of
the sect to leave them to die away of themselves as the people at
large became more enlightened.
After a night of sound sleep, Japanese fashion, on the floor of the
study in my pupil’s pretty new home, we rose at six and hastened
across the fields to attend the morning religious services in the
chapel of the school. Here for a full half-hour, or more, what had
every appearance of serious and devout religious worship was held
by the assembled teachers and pupils. All were neatly dressed in
black gowns; no evidences of having shuffled into unbrushed
garments, with toilets only half-done or wholly neglected, were
anywhere to be seen, nor was there the vacant stare, the loud
whisper, the stolen glance at newspaper or text-book; but all
responded to the sutras and intoned the appointed prayers and
portions of the Scriptures, while the time was accented by the not too
loud beating of a musical gong. Certainly, the orderliness and
apparent devotion quite exceeded that of any similar service at
“morning prayers” in the average American college or university.
A brief exhibition of judo, (a modified form of jiujitsu), and of
Japanese fencing, which was carried on in the dining-room while the
head-master was exchanging his priestly for his military dress, in
order to take part in a memorial service to deceased soldiers, at
which General Noghi was expected to be present, terminated my
entertainment at this Buddhist school for the training of temple boys.
As we left the crowd of them who had accompanied us thus far on
the way, and stood shouting banzais on the platform of the station,
there was no room for doubting the heartiness of their friendly feeling
toward the teacher of their teacher; although the two, while sharing
many of the most important religious views, were called by names
belonging to religions so different as Christianity and Buddhism.
The impressions from these two visits to Ikegami regarding the
changes going on in Buddhistic circles in Japan, and in the attitude
of Buddhism toward Christianity, were amply confirmed by
subsequent experiences. At Kyoto, the ancient capital and religious
centre of the empire, I was invited by the Dean of the Theological
Seminary connected with the Nishi Honwangi to address some six
hundred young priests of various sects on the same topic as that on
which the address was given at the Nichiren College near Ikegami. It
should be explained that this temple is under the control of the Shin-
shu, the most numerous and probably the most wealthy sect in the
Empire. The high priest of this sect is an hereditary count and
therefore a member of the House of Peers. He is also a man of
intelligence and of a wide-spreading interest in religion. At the time of
my visit, indeed, the Count was absent on a missionary tour in
China. This address also was listened to with the same respectful
attention by the several hundred Buddhist priests who had gathered
at the temple of Nishi Honwangi. Here again Mrs. Ladd and I were
made the recipients of the same courteous and unique hospitality.
Before the lecture began, we were entertained in the room which
had been distinguished for all time in the estimate of the nation by
the fact that His Majesty the Emperor held within its walls the first
public reception ever granted to his subjects by the Mikado; and after
the lecture we were further honoured by being the first outsiders ever
invited to a meal with the temple officers within one of the temple
apartments.
Later on at Nagoya, further evidence was afforded of the important
fact that the old-time religious barriers are broken down or are being
overridden, wherever the enlightenment and moral welfare of the
people seem likely to be best served in this way. Now Nagoya has
hitherto been considered one of the most conservative and even
bigoted Buddhist centres in all Japan. Yet a committee composed of
Buddhists and of members of the Young Men’s Christian Association
united in arrangements for a course of lectures on education and
ethics. This was remarked upon as the first instance of anything of
the sort in the history of the city.
When we seek for the causes which have operated to bring about
these important and hopeful changes in the temper and practises of
the Buddhism which is fast gaining currency and favour in Japan, we
are impressed with the belief that the greatest of them is the
introduction of Christianity itself. This influence is obvious in the
following three essential ways. Christian conceptions and doctrines
are modifying the tenets of the leading Buddhistic thinkers in Japan.
As I listened for several hours to his exposition of his conception of
the Divine Being, the divine manner of self-revelation, and of his
thoughts about the relations of God and man, by one of the most
notable theologians of the Shin Shu (the sect which I have already
spoken of as the most popular in Japan), I could easily imagine that
the exponent was one of the Alexandrine Church-Fathers, Origen or
Clement, discoursing of God the Unrevealed and of the Logos who
was with God and yet who became man. But Buddhism is also giving
much more attention than formerly to raising the moral standards of
both priests and people. It is sharing in the spirit of ethical quickening
and revival which is so important an element of the work of Christian
missions abroad, but which is alas! so woefully neglected in the so-
called Christian nations at home. Japanese Buddhism is feeling now
much more than formerly the obligation of any religion which asks
the adherence and support of the people, to help the people, in a
genuine and forceful way, to a nobler and better way of living.
Hitherto in Japan it has been that peculiar development of Confucian
ethics called Bushidō, which has embodied and cultivated the nobler
moral ideals. Religion, at least in the form which Buddhism has taken
in Japan, has had little to do with inspiring and guiding men in the life
which is better and best, here and now. But as its superstitions with
regard to the future are falling away and are ceasing practically to
influence the body of the people, there are some gratifying signs that
its influence upon the spiritual interests of the present is becoming
purer and stronger.
That Buddhism is improving its means of educating its followers, and
is feeling powerfully the quickening of the national pulse, due to the
advancing strides in educational development, is obvious enough to
any one able to compare its condition to-day with its condition not
more than a score of years ago. There are, of course, in the ranks of
all the Buddhist sects leaders who are ready to cry out against
heresies and the mischief of changes concealed under the guise of
reforms. The multitudes of believers are still far below the desirable
standard of either intelligence in religious matters, or of morals as
controlled by religious motives. But the old days of stagnation and
decay seem to be passing away; and the outlook now is that the
foreign religion, instead of speedily destroying the older native
religion, will have helped it to assume a new and more vigorous and
better form of life.
As the period of more bitter conflict and mutual denunciation gives
way to a period of more respectful and friendly, and even co-
operative attitude in advancing the welfare of the nation, the future of
both Buddhism and Christianity in Japan affords a problem of more
complicated and doubtful character. The nation is awakening to its
need of morals and religion,—in addition to a modern army and
navy, and to an equipment for teaching and putting to practical uses,
the physical sciences,—as never before. The awakening is
accompanied there, as elsewhere in the modern world, by a thirst for
reality. Whatever can satisfy this thirst, however named, will find
acceptance and claim the allegiance of both the thoughtful and the
multitudes of the common people; for in Japan, as elsewhere in the
modern world, men are not easily satisfied or permanently satisfied
with mere names.
 CHAPTER X
HIKONÉ AND ITS PATRIOT MARTYR

Among the feudal towns of Japan which can boast of a fine castle
still standing, and of an illustrious lord as its former occupant, there
are few that can rival Hikoné. Picturesquely seated on a wooded hill
close to the shores of Lake Biwa, with the blue waters and almost
equally blue surrounding mountains in full sight, the castle enjoys the
advantages of strength combined with beauty; while the lords of the
castle are descended from a very ancient family, which was awarded
its territory by the great Iyéyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa
Shōgunate, in return for the faithful services of their ancestor,
Naomasa, in bringing the whole land under the Tokugawa rule. They
therefore belonged to the rank of the Fudai Daimio, or Retainer
Barons, from whom alone the Roju, or Senators, and other officers of
the first class could be appointed. Of these lords of Hikoné much the
most distinguished was Naosuké, who signed the treaty with the
United States negotiated in 1857 and 1858. And yet, so strange are
the vicissitudes of history, and so influential the merely incidental
occurrences in human affairs, that only a chance visit of the Mikado
saved this fine feudal castle from the “general ruin of such buildings
which accompanied the mania for all things European and the
contempt of their national antiquities, whereby the Japanese were
actuated during the past two decades of the present régime.” Nor
was it until recent years that Baron Ii Naosuké’s memory has been
rescued from the charge of being a traitor to his country and a
disobedient subject of its Emperor, and elevated to a place of
distinction and reverence, almost amounting to worship, as a clear-
sighted and far-seeing statesman and patriot.
 “PICTURESQUELY SEATED ON A WOODED HILL”
However we may regard the unreasonableness of either of these two
extreme views of Naosuké’s character, one thing seems clear. In
respect to the laying of foundations for friendly relations between the
United States and Japan, we owe more to this man than to any other
single Japanese. No one can tell what further delays and resulting
irritation, and even accession of blood-shed, might have taken place
in his time had it not been for his courageous and firm position
toward the difficult problem of admitting foreigners to trade and to
reside within selected treaty-ports of Japan. This position cost him
his life. For a generation, or more, it also cost him what every true
Japanese values far more highly than life; it cost the reputation of
being loyal to his sovereign and faithful to his country’s cause. Yet
not five Americans in a million, it is likely, ever heard the name of
Baron Ii Kamon-no-Kami, who as Tairō, or military dictator, shared
the responsibility and should share the fame of our now celebrated
citizen, then Consul General at Shimoda, Townsend Harris. My
purpose, therefore, is two-fold: I would gladly “have the honour to
introduce” Ii Naosuké to a larger audience of my own countrymen;
and by telling the story of an exceedingly interesting visit to Hikoné, I
would equally gladly introduce to the same audience certain ones of
the great multitude of Japanese who still retain the knightly courtesy,
intelligence and high standards of living—though in their own way—
which characterised the feudal towns of the “Old Japan,” now so
rapidly passing away.
Baron Ii Naosuké, better known in foreign annals as Ii Kamon-no-
Kami, was his father’s fourteenth son. He was born November 30,
1815. The father was the thirteenth feudal lord from that Naomasa
who received his fief from the great Iyéyasu. Since the law of
primogeniture—the only exceptions being cases of insanity or bodily
defect—was enforced throughout the Empire, the early chances that
Naosuké would ever become the head of the family and lord of
Hikoné, seemed small indeed. But according to the usage of the Ii
clan, all the sons except the eldest were either given as adopted
sons to other barons, or were made pensioned retainers of their
older brother. All his brothers, except the eldest, had by adoption
become the lords of their respective clans. But from the age of
seventeen onward, Naosuké was given a modest pension and
placed in a private residence. He thus enjoyed years of opportunity
for training in arms, literature, and reflective study, apart from the
corrupting influences of court life and the misleading temptations to
the exercise of unrestricted authority—both of which are so injurious
to the character of youth. Moreover, he became acquainted with the
common people. That was also true of him, which has been true of
so many of the great men of Japan down to the present time. He
made his friend and counsellor of a man proficient in the military and
literary education of the day. And, indeed, it has been the great
teachers who, more than any other class, through the shaping of
character in their pupils, have influenced mankind to their good. It
was Nakagawa Rokurō who showed to Naosuké, when a young
man, the impossibility of the further exclusion of Japan from foreign
intercourse. It was he also who “influenced the future Tairō to make a
bold departure from the old traditions” of the country.
On the death, without male issue, of his oldest brother, Naosuké was
declared heir-apparent of the Hikoné Baronetcy. And on Christmas
day of 1850 he was publicly authorised by the Shōgunate to assume
the lordly title of Kamon-no-Kami. It is chiefly through the conduct of
the man when, less than a decade later, he came to the position
which was at the same time the most responsible, difficult and
honourable but dangerous of all possible appointments in “Old
Japan,” that the character of Baron Ii must be judged. On the side of
sentiment—and only when approached from this side can one
properly appreciate the typical knightly character of Japanese
feudalism—we may judge his patriotism by this poem from his own
hand:

Omi no mi kishi utsu nami no iku tabimo,

Miyo ni kokoro wo kudaki nuru kana;

or as freely translated by Dr. Griffis:—

“As beats the ceaseless wave on Omi’s strand

So breaks my heart for our beloved land.”

(Omi is the poetical appellation of Lake Biwa, on which the feudal

castle of the lords of Hikoné has already been said to be situated.)
How the sincerity of this sentiment may be reconciled with the act
which for an entire generation caused the baron to be stigmatised a
traitor is made clear through the following story told by the great
Ōkubo. In the troubled year of 1858, the Viscount, just before
starting on an official errand to the Imperial Court at Kyoto, called on
Baron Ii, who was then chief in command under the Shōgun, to
inform him of his expected departure on the morrow. He had
embodied his own views regarding the vexed question of foreign
affairs, on his “pocket paper,” in the form of a poem. This paper the
Viscount handed to the Baron and asked him whether his views
were the same as those of the poem. Having carefully read it Ii
approved and instructed Ōkubo to act up to the spirit of the poem,
which reads:
“However numerous and diversified the nations of the earth may be,
the God who binds them together can never be more than one.”
Whatever differences of view prevailed, between his political
supporters and his political enemies, as to the purity of Naosuké’s
patriotic sentiments, there was little opportunity for difference as to
certain other important elements of his character. He had
conspicuously the qualities needed for taking a position of dictatorial
command in times of turbulence and extreme emergency. Serious in
purpose, but slow in making up his mind, he had undaunted firmness
in carrying out his plans, such that “no amount of difficulties would
make him falter or find him irresolute.”
The burning question of foreign intercourse which the coming of
Commodore Perry had forced upon the Shōgunate in 1853, had
afterward been referred to the barons of the land. They favoured
exclusion by a large majority; and some of them were ready to
enforce it at the expense of a foreign war. But the recent experience
of China at the hands of the allied forces was beginning to teach the
Far East that lesson of preparedness by foreign and modern
education which Japan has since so thoroughly learned; and to the
fuller magnitude of which China herself is just awakening. To take
the extreme position of complete and final resistance to the demands
of the foreign forces seemed obviously to court speedy and
inevitable ruin for the country at large. Yet none of the barons,
except the Baron of Hikoné, had a plan to propose by which to
exclude alike the peaceful foreigner come to trade and the armed
foreigner come to enforce his country’s demand for peaceful
intercourse by the use of warlike means.
It is interesting to notice that Naosuké answered the question of the
Shōgunate in a manner to indicate the consistent policy of his
country from 1853 down to the present time. He did not, it is
probable, love or admire the personality of the foreign invader more
than did his brother barons; or more than does the average Chinese
official at the present time. On consulting with his own retainers, he
found the “learned Nakagawa” the sole supporter of his views. All the
clan, with the exception of this teacher and scholar, favoured
exclusion at any cost. “The frog in the well knows not the great
ocean,” says the Japanese proverb. And as to the Japanese people,
who at that time were kept “in utter ignorance of things outside of
their own country,” Count (now Prince) Yamagata said in 1887, with
reference to the superior foresight of Baron Ii: “Their condition was
like that of a frog in a well.”
In spite of the almost complete loneliness of his position among the
barons of the first rank, Naosuké advised the Shōgunate that the
tendencies of the times made it impossible longer to enforce the
traditional exclusiveness of Japan. But he also—and this is most
significant of his far-sighted views—advised the repeal of the law,
issued early in the seventeenth century, which prohibited the building
of vessels large enough for foreign trade; and this advice he coupled
with the proposal that Japan should build navies for the protection, in
future, of her own coasts. “Thus prepared,” he writes, “the country
will be free from the menaces and threatenings of foreign powers,
and will be able to uphold the national principle and polity at any
time.”
The division of opinion, and the bloody strifes of political parties, in
Japan, over the question of exclusion were not settled by the
Convention for the relief of foreign ships and sailors which followed
upon the return of the war-ships of the United States, and of other
foreign countries, in 1854. Quite the contrary was the truth. When
Mr. Townsend Harris arrived as Consul General in 1856, and began
to press the question of foreign trade and residence in a more
definite form, the party favouring exclusion was stronger, more bitter,
and more extreme than before. In their complete ignorance of the
very nature of a commercial treaty, the rulers of Japan quite
generally mistook the American demand to open Kanagawa, Yedo,
Osaka, Hiogo, and Niigata for an extensive scheme of territorial
aggression. This they were, of course, ready to resist to their own
death and to the ruin of the country. When the senators prepared a
memorial to the Imperial Cabinet, stating their difficulty and the
necessity of conforming to the foreign demand, and sent it to the
Imperial Capital by the hand of their president, Baron Hotta, they
were therefore instructed to delay, and to consult further with the
Tokugawa Family and with the Barons of the land, before again even
venturing to refer the matter to the Government at Kyoto. These
instructions were, under the circumstances, equivalent to a flat and
most dangerous refusal to allow the opening of the country at all.
It has not been generally recognised in his own country, how
extremely important and yet how difficult was the position of Mr.
Townsend Harris during the years, 1857-1858. Nor has he, in my
judgment, been awarded his full relative share of credit for laying in
friendly foundations the subsequent commercial and other forms of
intercourse between the United States and Japan. Mr. Harris’ task
was in truth larger and more complicated than that of Commodore
Perry. The factors of Japanese politics opposed to its
accomplishment were more manifold and vehement. Moreover, the
question of foreign intercourse was then complicated by two other
questions of the most portentous magnitude for the internal politics
and political development of Japan. These were, the question of who
should be the heir-apparent to the then ruling Shōgun; and the yet
more important, and even supremely important question of how the
Shōgunate should in the future stand related to the virtual—and not
merely nominal—supremacy of the Imperial House. The opposition
on both these questions was substantially the same as the
opposition to permitting foreign trade and residence in the land. If
then Commodore Perry deserves the gratitude of all for making the
first approaches, in a way without serious disruption and lasting
hatred, to begin the difficult task of opening Japan, Townsend Harris
certainly deserves no less gratitude for enlarging and shaping into
more permanent form the same “opening,” while quite as skilfully
and effectively avoiding the exasperation of similar and even greater
political evils.
His many embarrassments forced upon the somewhat too timid and
hesitating Shōgun the necessity of selecting some one man upon
whom the responsibility and the authority for decisive action could be
confidently reposed. Seeing this man in the person only of Ii Kamon-
no-Kami, Lord of Hikoné, he appointed him to the position of Tairō.
Now, this position of Tairō, or “Great Elder,” which may be
paraphrased by “President-Senator,” was one of virtual dictatorship.
Only the Shōgun, who appointed him, could remove the Tairō or
legally resist his demands. Naosuké was the last to hold this office;
for fortunately for Japan the Shōgunate itself soon came to an end;
but he will be known in history as Go-Tairō,—the dictator especially
to be honoured, because he was bold, clear-sighted, and ready to
die in his country’s behalf. On June 5, 1858, Baron Ii was installed in
the position which gave him the power to conclude the treaty, and
which at the same time made him responsible for its consequences
of weal or woe, to individuals and to the entire nation,—even to the
world at large. In this important negotiation the Japanese Baron
Naosuké, and the American gentleman, Harris, were henceforth the
chief actors.
It is not my intention to recite in detail the history of the negotiations
of 1858, or of the difficulties and risks which the Tairō had to face in
his conduct of them. While the Mikado’s sanction for concluding the
treaty with Mr. Harris was still anxiously awaited, two American men-
of-war arrived at Shimoda; and a few days later these were followed
by Russian war-ships and by the English and French squadrons
which had so recently been victorious in their war with China. It was
by such arguments that America and Europe clinched the consent of
reluctant Japan to admit them to trade and to reside within her
boundaries!
It seemed plain enough now that the Yedo Government could not
longer wait for permission from the Imperial Government to abandon
its policy of exclusion. Two of its members, Inouyé and Iwasé, were
forthwith sent to confer with the Consul General at Shimoda. When
Mr. Harris had pointed out the impossibility of continuing the policy of
exclusion, the dangers of adhering obstinately to the traditions of the
past, and had assured them of America’s friendly intervention to
secure favourable terms with the other powers of the West, the
commissioners returned to Yedo to report. But still the opposing
party grew; and still the Imperial Government delayed its consent.
Meantime the bitterness against Baron Ii was increased by the
failure of his enemies to secure the succession to the Shōgunate for
their favoured candidate. None the less, the Tairō took upon himself
the responsibility of despatching the same men with authority to sign
that Convention between the United States and Japan which, in spite
of the fact that it bore the name of the “Temporary Kanagawa Treaty”
and was subject to revision after a specified term of years, remained
unchanged until as late as 1895. This important event bore date of a
little more than a half-century ago—namely, July 29, 1858.
It is foreign to my purpose to examine the charges, urged against Ii
Kamon-no-Kami, of disobedience to the Imperial Government and of
traitorous conduct toward his country. The latter charge has long
since been withdrawn; and for this has been substituted the praise
and homage due to the patriot who is able to oppose public opinion,
to stand alone, to be “hated even by his relatives,” and to sacrifice
his life in his country’s behalf. That the Tairō did not obey the
Imperial command to submit again the question of exclusion to a
council of the Tokugawa princes and the Barons of the land is indeed
true. On the other hand, it is to be said that the Imperial Government,
by not forbidding the Treaty, had thrown back upon the Shōgunate
the responsibility for deciding this grave question; and that the
appearance of the foreign war-ships gave no further opportunity, in
wisdom, for continuing the policy of procrastination and delay. The
hour demanded a man of audacity, of clear vision into the future, and
of willingness to bear the full weight of a responsible decision. The
hour found such a man in the Japanese Naosuké, hereditary feudal
lord of Hikoné, but by providence in the position of Tairō, or military
dictator. It was fortunate, indeed, for the future relations of the United
States and Japan, and for the entire development of the Far East
under European influences, that an American of such patience,
kindliness, tactful simplicity, and sincere moral and religious
principle, met at the very critical point of time a Japanese of such
knightly qualities of honour, fearlessness, and self-centred force of
character. This point of turning for two political hemispheres, this
pivot on which swung the character of the intercourse between Far
East and Occident, owes more, I venture to think, to Townsend
Harris and to Ii Kamon-no-Kami than to any other two men.
The concluding of the Treaty did not allay the excitement of the
country over the intrusion of foreigners, or discourage the party of
the majority which favoured the policy of either risking all in an
immediate appeal to arms, or of continuing the effort to put off the
evil day by a policy of prevarication and temporising. Less than a
fortnight after its signing, the Shōgun became suddenly ill, and four
days later he died. Two days before his death, the three English
ships had anchored at Shinagawa, a suburb of the capital of the
Shōgunate; while the Russians had invaded the city of Yedo itself
and established themselves in one of its Buddhist temples.
Everything was now in confusion. The influence of the party for
exclusion—forceful, if necessary—was now greatly strengthened
among the Imperial Councillors at Kyoto; and intrigues for the
deposition of the Tairō and even for his assassination went on
apace. A serious and wide-spreading rebellion was threatened. The
resort of the Baron of Hikoné to force in order to crush or restrain his
enemies served, as a natural and inevitable result, to combine them
all in the determination to effect his overthrow—a result which his
opponents suggested he should forestall by committing harakiri, after
acknowledging his mistakes; and which his friends urged him to
prevent by resigning his office at Tairō.
Since Ii Kamon-no-Kami was not the man to retreat in either of these
two cowardly ways, he was destined to perish by assassination. On
March 25, 1860, one of the five annual festivals at which the princes
and barons of the land were in duty bound to present themselves at
the Shōgun’s Castle to offer congratulations, the procession of the
Tairō left his mansion at “half-past the fifth watch,” or 9 o’clock a. m.
Near the “Cherry-Field” gate of the castle, they were attacked by
eighteen armed men, who were all, except one, former retainers of
the Mito Clan, whose princes had been the most powerful enemy of
Baron Ii, but who had resigned from the clan, and become ronin, or
“wave-men,” in order not to involve in their crime the lord of the clan.
The suddenness of the attack, and the fact that the defenders were
impeded by the covered swords and flowing rain-coats which the
weather had made necessary, gave the attacking party a temporary
advantage. Baron Ii was stabbed several times through the sides of
his palanquin, so that when dragged out for further wounding and
decapitation, he was already dead. Thus perished the man who
signed the treaty with Townsend Harris, fifty years ago, in the forty-
sixth year of his age.
The motives of the two parties—that of the majority who favoured
exclusion and that of the minority who saw the opening of the
country to be inevitable—can best be made clear by stating them in
the language of each, as they were proclaimed officially to the
Japanese of that day. Fortunately, we are able to do this. So bitter
was the feeling against their feudal lord, even after his death, that it
seemed necessary, in order to prevent complete ruin from falling
upon the whole Clan of Hikoné, that all his official papers and
records should be burned. But Viscount Ōkubo, at no inconsiderable
danger to himself, managed “to save the precious documents”; for,
said he, “There will be nothing to prove the sincerity and unmixed
fidelity of Lord Naosuké, if the papers be destroyed. Whatever may
come I dare not destroy them.”
From one of these papers we quote the following sentences which
show why Baron Ii as Tairō signed, on his own responsibility, this
detested treaty with the hated and dreaded foreigners. “The question
of foreign intercourse,” it says, “is pregnant with serious
consequences. The reason why the treaty was concluded with the
United States was because of the case requiring an immediate
answer. The English and French Squadrons, after their victory over
China, were very soon expected to our coasts; and the necessity of
holding conferences with different nations at the same time might
cause confusion from which little else than war could be expected.
These foreigners are no longer to be despised. The art of navigation,
their steam-vessels and their military and naval preparations have
found full development in their hands. A war with them might result in
temporary victories on our part; but when our country should come to
be surrounded by their combined navies, the whole land would be
involved in consequences which are clearly visible in China’s
experience.... Trying this policy for ten or twelve years, and making
full preparation for protection of the country during that period, we
can then determine whether to close up or open the country to
foreign trade and residence.... If it were only one nation with which
we had to deal, it would be much easier; but several nations, coming
at this time with their advanced arts, it is entirely impossible to refuse
their requests to open intercourse with our country. The tendency of
the times makes exclusion an entire impossibility.”
But the assassins, on their part, before entering on their bloody
deed, had drawn up a paper which, as signed by seventeen, or all
except one of their number, they wished to have go down to posterity
in justification of their course. They, too, all met death either on the
spot, or subsequently by public execution, for their crime of
assassination. “While fully aware,” says this manifesto, “of the
necessity of some change in policy since the coming of the
Americans to Uraga, it is entirely against the interest of the country
and a shame to the sacred dignity of the land, to open commercial
relations, to admit foreigners into the castle, to conclude a treaty, to
abolish the established custom of trampling on the picture of Christ,
to permit foreigners to build places of worship of their evil religion,
Christianity, and to allow three Foreign Ministers to reside in the
land. Under the excuse of keeping the peace, too much compromise
has been made at the sacrifice of national honour. Too much fear
has been shown in regard to the foreigners’ threatening.”
This remarkable paper then goes on to charge the Tairō, Baron Ii,
with being responsible for so dishonourable an act of compromise.
He has assumed “unbridled power”; he has proved himself “an
unpardonable enemy of his nation,” a “wicked rebel.” “Therefore we
have consecrated ourselves to be the instruments of Heaven to
punish this wicked man; we have assumed on ourselves the duty of
putting an end to a serious evil by killing this atrocious autocrat.” The
assassins then go on to swear before Heaven and earth, gods and
men, that their act was motived by loyalty to the Emperor, and by the
hope to see the national glory manifested in the expulsion of
foreigners from the land.
At this distance of half a century, and considering the spirit of the
former age, we need not judge between Naosuké and his murderers
as regards the sincerity of their patriotism. But as to which of the two
parties followed the path of wisdom, there can be no manner of
doubt. Both Japan and its foreign invaders still owe a great debt of
gratitude and a tribute of wisdom, to Baron Ii Kamon-no-Kami. While
over all our clouded judgment hangs serene the truth of the
autograph of four Chinese characters with which, years afterwards,
the Imperial Prince Kitashirakawa honoured the book written to
vindicate the Tairō: “Heaven’s ordination baffles the human.”
How the memory of its former feudal lord is cherished in Hikoné, and
how his spirit still survives and in some sort dominates its citizens, I
had occasion to know during two days of early February, 1907. The
little city, headed by Mr. Tanaka, the steward of the present Count Ii,
by letter and then by a personal visit from the Christian pastor, Mr.
Sonoda, had urgently invited us to visit them, with the promise that
we should see the castle and other reminders of its former feudal
lord. I, on my part, was to speak to them on education and morality,
the two subjects about which the serious people of Japan are just
now most eager to hear. The same gentleman who had been the
medium of the invitation, was to be our escort from Kyoto to Hikoné.
But on the way, although the wind was piercing and light snow was
falling, we saw again the familiar objects of interest about the lower
end of Lake Biwa;—Miidera Temple, with its relics of the legendary
giant Benkei, such as the bell which he carried part way up the hill
and then dropped and cracked, and the huge kettle out of which he
ate his rice; then the wonderful pine-tree at Karasaki, the sail down
the lake and under the bridge of Seta; and, finally, the sights of
Ishiyama.
At a tea-house near the station here we were met by Mr. Tanaka,
who had come by train to extend the welcome of the city and who
emphasised this welcome by referring to the interest which we, as
Americans, in common with all our countrymen, must feel in the
place that had been the residence of the great Tairō. For had not he
“influenced the Shōgunate to open the country to the United States,
and lost his life for his advanced views?”
As the train conveyed us into the uplands, the snow began to fall
more heavily until it lay nearly a foot deep upon the plain and
wooded hill, crowned with its castle, of the ancient feudal town. Just
as the setting sun was making the mountains and the clouds aglow
with a rose colour, as warm and rich as anything to be seen in
Switzerland, we reached the station of Hikoné, and were at once
taken into its waiting-room to receive and return greetings of some
thirty of the principal citizens who had come out to welcome the city’s
guests. On account of the deep snow it was a jinrikisha ride of nearly
half an hour to the place where we were to be lodged—the Raku-
raku-tei, just beside the castle-moat, under its hill, and almost in the
lake itself. Here a beautiful but purely Japanese house, which was
built by the lord of the castle as a villa, stands in one of the finest
gardens of all Japan.
The fear that their foreign guests would not be entirely comfortable,
even if entertained in the best Japanese style, made it difficult for us
at first to discard or neglect the accessories especially provided, and
disport ourselves as though we were really cherishing, and not
feigning, the wish to be treated by them as their feudal lord would
have treated his friends at the beginning of the half century now
gone by. In the end, however, we succeeded fairly well in the effort to
merge ourselves, and our modern Western habits and feelings, in
the thoughts, ways and emotions of the so-called “Old Japan.”
Flags were hung over the quaint Japanese doorway of the villa; and
the manager, the landlord, and all the servants, were in proper array
to greet the long line of jinrikishas which were escorting the guests.
Our shoes removed, we were ushered through numerous rooms and
corridors, made attractive with the quiet beauty of choice screens
and the finest of mats, into the best apartment of the house. Here
bright red felt had been spread over the mats; a tall lacquer hibachi,
daimyo style, stood in the middle of the chamber; and large lacquer
or brass candlesticks, with fat Hikoné candles and wicks nearly a
half-inch thick, stood on either side of the hibachi and in each of the
corners of the room.
Thus far, the surroundings were well fitted to carry our imaginations
back to the time of Ii Kamon-no-Kami himself. But there were two
articles of the furnishing sure to cause a disillusionment. These were
a pair of large arm-chairs, arranged throne fashion behind the
hibachi, and covered with green silk cushions (or zabuton) which
were expected to contribute both to our comfort and to our sense of
personal dignity, while we were “officially receiving”—so to say.
Without offending our kind hosts, I trust, and certainly to the increase
of our own satisfaction, we begged permission to slip off from our
elevated position, so calculated to produce the feelings of social