Land Monopoly and Agrain System- In South Kanara with Special Reference to Kasargod Taluk

About the Author One may get astonished at the Innumerable types of landhold ings or land tenures that were in Vogue in South Kanara and the variety of shares expected from the peasants by the landlords on the one side and similar obligations anticipated from the landlords by the Company, on the other. The care and cautions with which the author gathered details of tenures and their related obligations invites special attention of researchers and the scholarly public. In this work, they get a cross section of the land revenue system in Malabar, the complexity of which, however, may bewilder a novice.

Preface This monograph is an outcome of a research programme undertaken by me during the eighties with the financial support of the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi The British administration in Kanara had introduced structural changes in the agrarian system as elsewhere in India These changes and the agrarian policy of the British had been traced and analysed in an all India context by authorities like Baden Powell and Romesh Chandra Dutt. However regional studies with special reference to a taluk, for highlighting the operation of the system had not been given proper attention by agrarian specialists. Therefore a major project was undertaken to trace an indepth study of the system of South Kanara with a proper emphasis on the system which had continued in Kasargod, the northernmost district of the Kerala State. Earlier this region was included as the southernmost taluk of the Kanara district.

When a research programme was pursued in this direction, it had its own limitations and difficulties. The early revenue records and several administrative reports of the region, left by several commissions and district collectors for a period over six decades had incorporated the entire district of Kanara as an administrative unit. Following the foot prints of Thomas Munro, the Commissioner of Kanara, the statistics and other revenue details were given for the whole district. The district manual by Sturrock is a good example for this. Therefore a study pertaining to a taluk had its glaring shortcomings, which were seriously experienced in the present work also. With all such limitations this is an earnest effort to highlight the British policy in the promotion of a land monopoly system with proper juridical backing and support by the state. In fact the revenue policy followed by the colonial state had been highly responsible for the economic drain and backwardness of the region.

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