(4) Aōyítë jáōítë

das kōs path.

tōr máyâ bápë dhání

Kháitë náhí del.

Meaning: In coming to and going from your father's house) (one has to walk) wenty (long) miles, your parents (howver), O dear woman, did not give a linner (to our men).

(5) Aōítë jáōítë
dás jōrá jūtáyë
Kheyāí gël

Tōrë lagín, dhāní.

Meaning: In coming to and going from your father's house) ten pairs of shoes ecame torn. And all this (trouble) (only) or you, dear woman!

In each perghana there are two headmen among these Mahatos known respectively as the desmandal and the Maharai ( महाराय ). Any man in the family of a deceased lesmandal may be appointed by the Zeminlar of the perghana to discharge the functions of this office. The Zemindar has however no hand in the appointment of the Maharai. The oldest man in the family of the previous Maharai is generally recognised by the Kurmis as his successor. These two officers preside over all social deliberations of the Kurmis. The fines realised from social delinquents and persons driven out of society for misdeeds are divided between these superintendents of social discipine. Besides a share in these fines the desmandal levies a toll of half an anna per family every year within his perghana. He moreover gets 14 Rupee at every divorce or dissolution of marriage.

The marriage tie is as easily broken as it is contracted among the Kurmis. Any of the parties, the man or the wife, may on such grounds as ill-treatment or neglect procure a dissolution of marriage. The simple formality to be gone through at a dissolution consists of the delivery of the iron bangle given at marriage to the husband and the rubbing off of the vermilion paint from the forehead of the wife. All this has to be done overtly and at a public place in the presence of the village elders. This done the divorced woman may take a new husband at her pleasure. Sometimes however a divorce is followed by a criminal case, though it seldom leads to a civil dispute.

The more enlightened among the Kurmis have just commenced in Bankura and

neighbouring places to invite a Brahmin priest to officiate at a marriage. A marriage thus contracted can in no case be dissolved; and even a widow, whose marriage was so contracted, can not take a second husband. The practice is however an innovation and is confined to only a few leading families. The bulk of the people

are averse to it.

According to the traditional law of the caste a daughter never inherits properties left by her parents. The nearest agnates of the deceased take in preference to daughters. In our courts of law, however, the rights of daughters are being steadily recognised. By an indiscriminate application of the Hindu law of the Dayabhag school our law courts find for the daughters, though like other Kolarian tribes the Kurmis as a class cherish a strong feeling against such succession.

The Vaishnavs of the Nadia school are the religious preceptors of the Kurmis. It is believed that these disciples of Chaitanya carried to the Kurmis the gos pel of Hinduism. The thanks of the Hindu society are due to these religious teachers, for they it is who have stopped the wholesale conversion of these and the neighbouring people to Christianity. The Vaishnavs, it seems, have a greater religious hold on these Kurmis than the priests of the Brahmin caste, whose service is absolutely needed only at a Sraddh ceremony. The excommunicated Brahmins from the neighbouring provinces of Bengal and Behar officiate as priests in Kurmi society. These Brahmins have not as yet formed themselves into a separate caste. This is a sure indication that the connection of this caste with the Brahmin is only of a recent date.

Traces of totemism are visible in the division of the caste into septs. The sept or gotra of a Kurmi generally denotes some natural object or animal held in special reverence by the sept bearing its name. A Kurmi is not allowed to marry in his own sept or gotra. The following are the most important septs among the Kurmis of Manbhum.

1. Kesaria (from Kesar, an edible root) 2. Dumuria (from Dumur, a kind of fig) Tiruar (a kind of bird)

3.

4. Kethiar (from Kethia, a kind of

7. Banwar (from residence in ban or jungle)

8. Jalbanwar (from Jal, a fishing trap) 9. Chhanchmutruar (from Chhancha, the eaves)

10. Guliar (from Guli, a earthen ball)

11. Kanuria (the name is derived probably from the name of some place which cannot however be now traced).

The principal festival of this caste is the Karam, celebrated on the eleventh day of the waxing moon of the month of Bhadra (August-September). The other festivals more or less respected are the Dharm pooja and the Gobardhan pooja.

The Kurmi-mahatos are as a class given to agriculture as their sole means of livelihood. They are sober, painstak ing and law-abiding. The mahato is always a peaceful citizen, an industrious agriculturist and a firm clearer of the jungle. The Kurmis are as a class more literate than the other Kolarian tribes of the district. With their growing intelligence the members of this caste have been trying hard to reform themselves and to bring themselves into closer touch with Hindu society.

HARINATH GHOSE.

HE Indian system of land tenure is an entirely novel one. It cannot be identified with any known system that is found to prevail anywhere on earth. Roughly it may be divided thus:

Tentirely novel one.

(1) Zemindary, which again is of two kinds

(i) Permanent and

(ii) Temporary ; and

(2) Ryotwari.

In (1) (i) there is a landlord who is vested with all the proprietary rights in land, subject to the public demand by the state. This public demand is, in certain parts of the country, e.g., Bengal, certain parts of Madras and Benares, fixed permanently. The fixity is not as to rates as might be supposed or thought reasonable. The total sum that can ever be demanded by the state was fixed in perpetuity in the year 1793 by Lord Cornwallis, the then Governor-General of India. In the others (1) (ii) the landlord is sometimes solely responsible and at other times responsible jointly with many collaborators in the work of agriculture, for the payment of what is conveniently called land revenue.

There is no fixity as to the sum nor exactly even as to the rate. But it is variable at the end of 20, 25 or 30 years, as the case may be. There is a re-valuation and a new assessment.

The second heading in the classification, the Ryotwari, prevails in the greater part of India. Here a sort of theoretical dualism exists as to the proprietary right in land. The state is declared to share the right with the ryot, the tenant: so that, theoretically speaking, the two together constitute the whole of what a landlord possesses elsewhere. The state after a new assessment every 20, 25, or 30 years, fixes the land revenue for the term. This demand of the state is authoritatively announced to be never more than 50 p. c. of the net economic rent derived from the land, after making allowance for the increase due to improvements made at the cost or initiative of the ryot, the actual cultivator of the soil. The land in this ease is divided into small cultivable groups and given over to the ryots. There is, in almost all cases, a certain limit beyond which no one individual can own land..

So that the temporarily settled districts cover altogether about 486,268,000 acres, out of a total of 608,133,000 acres, or in other words the proportion is 80 per cent.

The above classification has been made from the standpoint of the ownership of the land,-who is the proprietor. But we may base the classification on the permanency or otherwise of the land settlement. Thus:

(1) Permanent settlement which corresponds to 1 (i) in the former classification.

(2) Temporary settlement which again includes (i) Zemindary corresponding to 1. (ii) in the former, and (ii) Ry otwari-2, above.

It will be seen from the above general review that except in Bengal and certain parts of other provinces, the system is practically what is called Nationalisation of Land. We shall deal with this later on when we come to each system separately.

Nationalisation of land has many theoretical advantages and has been advocated in various forms by many eminent economic writers, e.g., John Stuart Mill in England, Henry George in America. The most important and cogent argument in its favour is that of the "Unearned Increment." The increase in the value of land due to the general social progress ought not to be appropriated by the owner of the land, since he has not contributed anything to bring it about. It looks like "exploitation." The state, the organic unit, as the representative of the society, ought, in fairness to be given the benefit of what it has helped to develop. Another argument in favour of land nationalisation is said to be that the state can become the largest landlord and hence make permanent improvements in land on a very large scale, that are beyond the means of the ordinary cultivators, and further that it can set the model to the farmers.

However plausible the theory may sound, we are bound to say that it has been a mere theory, inspite of every endeavour to bring it to bear upon actual

movement that has had any practical aspect, advocates the immediate adoption of the system as an institution in the national economy of land settlement. If we look to the more advanced countries, we nowhere find any such system actually existing. The reasons, we believe, are obvious. And in connection with India none of the objections seem to be attenuated to any extent.

In India the nationalisation of land was effected at a time when the boldest theoretical advocate of the system in Europe could not have conceived the idea of actually introducing it at once. In other lands it is still on experimental operation. But what of that? India has got it as an unalterable established national institution.

Then, again, the tendency under this system is to make the government irresponsible and oftentimes reckless. The value of land in an old country goes on increasing and with it necessarily the realised revenue. A government that gets an increased income so automatically, with such certainty and at the same time without any relation to its financial needs, has a very great tendency to extravagance. In public finance, as distinguished from private, the income is raised with reference to the expenditure. The expenditure is submitted and criticised not for its own sake, but in connection with the ways and means of raising the revenue. Where, as in India, there is no effective criticism as to the raising of the revenue, which is done so mechanically, the expenditure is forced to the absurd position that it feels bound to increase on the same scale. And in India, it may be noticed, the revenue raised from the land forms a high percentage of the total income.* Moreover, the Legislature frames and passes the budget, while the land revenue does not depend a bit upon the Legislature. It is entirely at the discretion of the executive. And the reader may well remember that the executive is, in India, the bureaucracy.

Then again even if it be tenable that the unearned increment can and should go to the government as the representative of the society, in what sense can it be maintained

The percentage is exactly 385 if we take the figures of the year 1911-12.

when the government is manned almost entirely by an alien people, with no controlling guidance by those connected with the land? Where in the government machinery can be found that responsibility which can grow only from the vesting of in

terest?

It may be posited in answer that as surpluses grow from year to year owing to the increased land revenue, the state may relieve the people by lightening the burden of taxation in other lines. But that cannot be done directly, you cannot reach exactly the same classes. In India there is not that universal consumption of particular commodities, the tax on which can be remitted with a view to distribute the advantage secured thereby over the majority. Indirectly, of course, it can be attained, for example by organising vast sanitary works of which there is very great scope in India, introducing primary education among the illiterate, and other works of popular benefit. But no, these require urgings, and there is not, nor can there be anybody to urge from the side of the people who can make himself effectively heard and obeyed. The system tends to be essentially uncritical. Hence the budget year after year moves in the stereotyped channels determined by the fixed ideas of the bureaucratic intellect. The military expenditure was growing at a terribly increasing rate, and now the rate is not so high only because it cannot absorb more. In education the yearly return shows indeed an increasing sum spent. But the details reveal that the inspecting staff and such other 'accidentalia'appropriate the heaviest part, the teaching staff remaining almost where it was. (I am here not talking of the highest University education). Perhaps the intensive culture of the intellect is preferred by officialdom to the extensive. But they ought to know that a new country (India is educationally so) needs extensive culture more than the intensive while the process of intellectual reclamation is going on. Or, shall we say that nepotism has a hand in it?

A further disadvantage in India arises

from the fact that the government policy with regard to land revenue as enunciated does not find adequate expression through the defective administrative machinery. Mr. Gokhale and others made a systematic enquiry in the Deccan territories and they

were

came to the conclusion that there many estates where the annual yield per acre had undergone a positive diminution, and yet the new settlement had put a higher valuation and assessed at a higher rate. Indeed, it may be said that the existing difference in the official and the Indian views is not so much on the declared policy as on the actual state of things prevail. ing. The policy, it is complained, is, in most cases, a dead letter and does not reach the peasant.

In a series of articles we intend to deal with each of the systems of tenure prevailing in India. We shall see the causes that brought about the permanent Zemindary settlement in Bengal, how it introduced, what was the policy at the time as to land settlement in other parts of India, how the policy subse quently underwent radical change. through what struggles it had to move and how at length the permanent settle ment scheme for the whole of India was modified and modelled after the decennial settlement of old, with an increase of the period of settlements. We hope also to discuss the relative effect of the two systems prevailing at present, whether any is perfect or whether they are complementary, and, finally, whether it is possible at the present stage to devise any method that can bring about a better and more harmonious equi librium in the landed interests.

For more than a century, the domi nating economic status in India has been agricultural; and we hold that along this very line the economic freedom of India must be worked out. We have to formulate "economic freedom" in connec tion with agriculture, what it means, how it can be introduced, what the state has already done in that direction, what else it proposes to do, and, finally, what independent and what joint effort the public generally can exert for that purpose.

HE present age may be called the Age of Invention. The steam engine, the electric telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the Rontgen rays, laboursaving machinery of various descriptions, quick-firing guns, aeroplanes and submarines, do not by any means exhaust the long list of its inventive feats. The last century boasts of more brilliant inventions than all the previous centuries of human history put together. Mechanical inven tion has been marching with bewildering rapidity, the goal of one generation be coming the starting point of the next.

The greatest illusion of the Western nations of the present day and of those who are obsessed by Western views is, that these miraculous achievements are advancing them on the path of civilization, and are, on the whole at least, making for their own welfare as well as that of humanity outside the pale of Western civilization. It is this illusion which in the case of otherwise clear-sighted and level-headed men occludes the causal connexion which to us appears to subsist between the recent wonderful mechanical applications of Natural Science and the manifold evils of the Western civilization which all right thinking people so heartily denounce and deplore.

The military and predatory spirit which is characteristic of the first stage of civilization is still prevalent in the West to an extent which does not consist with the ethical standard of a highly developed civilization. The armaments of Europe have been increasing apace. In fact, Europe is a standing military camp. Compulsory service prevails among several of the most highly civilized nations of the West. The rather too frequent well-organised strikes of the labouring classes, the "Have-nots," to remedy their wrongs and obtain their rights from the capitalist classes, the "Haves," sometimes attain the magnitude of civil wars. The ultimate question between every two nations, and between the

different classes of every nation, as between individuals, still is in the highly expressive language of Carlyle: "Can I kill thee or canst thou kill me." Militarism pervades even the cultured classes to no small extent. There are warlike representatives of science and literature, as there are militant digni taries of the Christian Church who from their pulpits invoke the aid and blessing of heaven on aggressive wars involving the wanton destruction of thousands of fellowcreatures. Even high-born ladies of England (the suffragettes) are having recourse to brutal and diabolical methods to wrest what they consider to be their rights from government.

The more thoughtful among the Westerns deprecate and denounce this militarism, and they are vigorously carrying on a propagandist movement for peace. It is a curious anomaly, however, that while they arraign militarism, they should almost in the same breath join the chorus of laudation for mechanical invention which directly or indirectly provides the most potent incentive to organised warfare and affords the greatest facilities greatest facilities for it. There can be hardly any doubt, that the industrial applications of modern science are mainly res ponsible for the prevailing military and predatory proclivities of the West. It is the elaborate labour-saving machinery of modern times which has created a network of gigantic mills and factories. The multifarious produce of these stupendous concerns being on a superlatively vast scale, markets for it must be found outside Europe. The colossal armaments maintained by the great powers of Europe are mainly for the protection and expansion of their interests abroad; and these interests are chiefly, if not solely, commercial. It is over such interests that Russia came into conflict with Japan in the Far East, Italy with Turkey in Africa, and Germany was very near being drawn into war with France in Morocco some time ago, and is fighting just now against tremendous odds.