DOI Artikel:
Chakravarty-Kaul, Minoti: The commons in nineteenth-century Punjab
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49004#0037
THE COMMONS IN
NINETEENTH-CENTURY PUNJAB
By
Minoti Ch akrav arty-Kaul
Picture a vast region interspersed with rivers
originating from the High Himalayas. Pasto-
ralists roam the Central Plains of the Punjab,
cultivating by broadcasting the seed and har-
vesting only if there was rain and feeding the
rest to the cattle. Sedentary cultivators settled
along rivers manage flood cultivation or else
depend on wells, map 1. Picture the foothills
of the Himalayas inhabited by cultivators
who could depend on cultivation but also had
pastoral herds. This region can be visualised
as three distinct ecosystems corresponding
with geo-climatic variations along each of the
inter-riverine regions. Additionally the up-
land ridges running through the centre of
these river systems were dry while the river-
ine areas were flooded in the post summer
months. Each ecosystem along the rivers was
complementary to the others and supplemen-
tary in terms of seasonal variation and natural
resources.
The whole region must be looked upon as a
vast common in the nineteenth century,
shared by pastoralists and cultivators. The
political climate was uncertain. There were
periods of natural scarcities which developed
into famines and later epidemics. For most of
the century, settled cultivators could survive
only if they could produce an amount for
“revenue” payment or tax and save their catt-
le by handing them over to the nomadic culti-
vators.
This required ingenuity in land-use pat-
terns in adapting to natural risks and a prop-
erty rights pattern to withstand man-made
uncertainties. Such self-organisation required
a set of institutions which would provide
both incentives to support it and disincen-
tives to avoid spoiling the resource.
Here we shall argue that the land-use pat-
tern followed a system of rotational fallows
of varying duration — banjar kadim and ban-
jar jadid (long fallow and short fallow), and
spread over a wide area so as to minimise spe-
cific risks at particular time periods. The sys-
tem was also geared to a particular level of
demographic pressure and whenever there
were signs of increase here the lengths of fal-
lows were adjusted accordingly.
In the next section we propose to support
this argument by indicating that the system
was kept going by an arrangement of com-
munal, private and “primunal” (=pn(ate)+
yomjmunal) property rights designed to
support the system.1 In this regime, the long
fallows were kept in common both close to
the homes and over long distances spread
over different terrain like the hills and the
forests - these were the regional common fal-
lows, table 1.
Grazing patterns in the Punjab varied accord-
ing to the geography of each locality. Official
descriptions at different points of time can be
fitted into a stylized picture for the entire re-
gion between the Jumna and the Indus in the
nineteenth century. The earliest description is
from the reports of Karnal, Hissar and the
Delhi district settlements carried out when
they were parts of the N. W. P. These are
mainly from Fortescue in Delhi and Hissar,
NINETEENTH-CENTURY PUNJAB
By
Minoti Ch akrav arty-Kaul
Picture a vast region interspersed with rivers
originating from the High Himalayas. Pasto-
ralists roam the Central Plains of the Punjab,
cultivating by broadcasting the seed and har-
vesting only if there was rain and feeding the
rest to the cattle. Sedentary cultivators settled
along rivers manage flood cultivation or else
depend on wells, map 1. Picture the foothills
of the Himalayas inhabited by cultivators
who could depend on cultivation but also had
pastoral herds. This region can be visualised
as three distinct ecosystems corresponding
with geo-climatic variations along each of the
inter-riverine regions. Additionally the up-
land ridges running through the centre of
these river systems were dry while the river-
ine areas were flooded in the post summer
months. Each ecosystem along the rivers was
complementary to the others and supplemen-
tary in terms of seasonal variation and natural
resources.
The whole region must be looked upon as a
vast common in the nineteenth century,
shared by pastoralists and cultivators. The
political climate was uncertain. There were
periods of natural scarcities which developed
into famines and later epidemics. For most of
the century, settled cultivators could survive
only if they could produce an amount for
“revenue” payment or tax and save their catt-
le by handing them over to the nomadic culti-
vators.
This required ingenuity in land-use pat-
terns in adapting to natural risks and a prop-
erty rights pattern to withstand man-made
uncertainties. Such self-organisation required
a set of institutions which would provide
both incentives to support it and disincen-
tives to avoid spoiling the resource.
Here we shall argue that the land-use pat-
tern followed a system of rotational fallows
of varying duration — banjar kadim and ban-
jar jadid (long fallow and short fallow), and
spread over a wide area so as to minimise spe-
cific risks at particular time periods. The sys-
tem was also geared to a particular level of
demographic pressure and whenever there
were signs of increase here the lengths of fal-
lows were adjusted accordingly.
In the next section we propose to support
this argument by indicating that the system
was kept going by an arrangement of com-
munal, private and “primunal” (=pn(ate)+
yomjmunal) property rights designed to
support the system.1 In this regime, the long
fallows were kept in common both close to
the homes and over long distances spread
over different terrain like the hills and the
forests - these were the regional common fal-
lows, table 1.
Grazing patterns in the Punjab varied accord-
ing to the geography of each locality. Official
descriptions at different points of time can be
fitted into a stylized picture for the entire re-
gion between the Jumna and the Indus in the
nineteenth century. The earliest description is
from the reports of Karnal, Hissar and the
Delhi district settlements carried out when
they were parts of the N. W. P. These are
mainly from Fortescue in Delhi and Hissar,