Rule by Records: Land Registration and Village Custom in Early British Punjab.

• Author: FENECH, LOUIS E.
• Position: Review

Rule by Records: Land Registration and Village Custom in Early British Punjab. By RICHARD SAUMAREZ SMITH. New Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1996. Pp. 451. Rs 695.

In 1985 Richard S. Smith published his path-breaking article, "Rule-by-records and rule-by-reports: Complementary aspects of the British imperial rule of law," in the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology (19.1): 153-76. This article went some way in establishing his reputation as a keen analyst and interpreter of Indo-Anglian land-surveying records, as well as a documenter of shifts in colonial knowledge and constructions about north Indian society. This book represents a far more thorough elaboration of the thesis put forward in this article, through further interpretation and meticulous analysis of the 1853 wajib-ul-[CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]arz or administration paper of tahsil Ludhiana in the Punjab. Rich in detail and profound in its depth of scholarship, this book presents some of the most painstaking research I have ever encountered on land-surveying documents in the Punjab and their ramifications in the mid- to late nineteenth-century construction of the category "India."

The book is divided into an introduction, two parts, and a conclusion which, in total, comprise nine chapters. Scattered throughout the book are numerous beautiful color maps, genealogies, and charts--all of which are particularly useful in illustrating Smith's analysis. The introduction discusses the method that Smith follows in his investigation, dilating specifically on his choice of Ludhiana village records and his preference for a synchronic rather than diachronic approach. This segment also includes useful sections, one of which outlines his main argument and another which provides a summary. The second two parts are intimately related. Part one deconstructs the official categories of land holding, while part two reconstructs the village idiom of shareholding. The conclusion places shareholding within the broader context of village government in order to determine what the District Officer of Ludhiana in 1853 knew of "the details of organizing agriculture within the district." Placed at the end of his discussion is a useful series of appendices, the lengthiest of which is a transliteration and translation of the actual 1853 wajib-ul-[CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]arz of Ludhiana.

Part one draws upon Smith's above-mentioned article, demonstrating how the registration of...