From mirasidar to pattadar: South India in the late nineteenth century

Abstract

In November 1874, when the new raiyatwari settlement was in progress, R.W. Barlow, the Collector of Chingleput District in the Madras Presidency, submitted a report to the Madras Board of Revenue. The report was on the ’evils arising from the Mirassi tenures ... the heavy coercive process resulting therefrom, and the measures I propose as the remedy’.’ Barlow, who was apparently having a difficult time in enforcing the new rtii-vtitwari settlement, listed the following four causes for explaining ’the unsatisfactory relations’ between mirasidars and payakaris (non-rnirasidars) and ’the frequent occurrences of the false complaints of trespass, theft, robbery, and even arson’,