John Locke, Accumulation by Dispossession and the Governance of Colonial India

Abstract

This paper proposes a historical framework for examining colonial land policies in India. It argues that Locke's dualistic distinctions between settled agriculture on enclosed land and non-settled forms of livelihood framed basic differences in the ways that the colonial administration conceived of agricultural fields and forests. Locke's dichotomies between value and non-value-producing labour are also traced in early political economy, a discipline that exerted a direct influence on Indian governance, and particularly its land settlements. It is further argued that distinctions between value-producing labour and waste were formative in the development of the Forest Laws in the late nineteenth century, legislation that provided the legal framework for adivasi dispossession for the past century and a quarter.

Key Words:

• John Locke
• wasteland
• property
• dispossession
• colonial governance
• India

Notes

See Gidwani (1992; 2008) for an insightful contribution to this otherwise neglected topic, focusing on the Permanent Settlement of Bengal 1793.

Ranajit Guha (1984) has argued persuasively that colonial rule was based on domination, rather than hegemony. While this is true in considering Indian culture and language as a whole, Wells' argument that the British only needed to establish commercial and territorial control to constitute a hegemonic bloc also has merit. I am using Wells' understanding of hegemony in this paper.

The labour theory of property also had major implications for gender exclusion, as do all contract theories (Pateman, 1988). However, a consideration of Locke, property and gender is beyond the confines of this short paper.

In examining the pre-colonial permeability between the boundaries of the sown and the forest areas of western India, Sumit Guha (2001: 14) shows how colonial forest legislation rigidified the boundaries between intensive cultivation and hill cultivation in western India, and proposes a new historical agenda based on viewing hill and plains communities as co-evolving in continuous interaction involving both conflict and co-operation over two millennia.

Indeed, Perelman (2000: 196-7) argues that the increasing commodification of land in England and the formal subsumption of subsistence producers to agrarian capital by the early nineteenth century was a major reason why Smith and Malthus did not dwell on primitive accumulation. As is well known, Smith attributed primitive accumulation to the frugal habits of a fortunate few.

Although the ryotwari settlement benefited theLewa Patidars more than other castes, it is not suggested that British policies enriched the Lewa Patidars orKunbi Marathas. Indeed, as Gidwani (2008) shows, inflexible British revenue demands and the Malthusian famine policies promoted a laissez-faire approach to famine conditions and led to the impoverishment and death of hundreds of thousands of cultivators in Gujarat, including theLewa Patidars during 1877-88 in Mahrashtra and 1899-1901 in Gujarat.

The primary documents cited in this article are all found at the Asian and African Reading Room of the British Library, formerly known as the India Office Records Room. For citation purposes, I have used the conventions of previous years, listed under Government of India, followed by year, title, IOR (India Office Records) and the shelf number of the document.

Curiously, in the Maine correspondence held in the India Office Records and Reading Room at the British Library, there appears to be no additional correspondence or deliberative discussion on Maine's reasons for supporting a law that virtually extinguished the rights of existing cultivators in forest land or forest produce. Almost all the other laws framed and passed by Maine while Legal Counsel in India between 1860 and 1869 contain copious commentaries by him.

However, the Madras Government argued against an all-India Act. Members of the Madras Government argued strenuously that many District Forests bordered village lands and, therefore, were impossible to demarcate from the common rights that villagers had held for centuries. They introduced their own Forest Conservation Rules. Similarly, the Bombay Government remained outside the purview of the all-India Forest Act(s) until 1878.