Competing Landed Interests: Customary Claims, Land Titles and Formal Law in Manipur, Circa 1890–1990

This article provides a long-term perspective on the history of land tenure for over a century in the colonial and post-colonial eras of Manipur, India. Modernisation theory assumes too rigid division between traditional and modern attributes of land laws. The article, however, endorses the view that ‘the Anglo-Indian legal system was distinctly Janus-faced and rested on two contradictory principles’ of public law and personal law (D. A. Washbrook, Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 3 [1981]: 653). The flagship land legislation of Manipur (MLR & LR Act 1960) has been framed within the hill–valley framework. But the hill–valley binary of this public law provided too rigid mechanism to understand the history of legal formalisation. In theory, statutory (public) laws in land apply to only the valley areas of Manipur and customary (personal) law applies to the hill areas. But in practice, there exist different degrees of legal formality.