G SAM Vs. TRAMALINGA MUDALIAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a suit for ejectment filed in the ordinary Civil Court. Defendants plead that a Civil Court has no jurisdiction as the village of Puliyampattu in which the suit lands lie is an unsettled Jagir , within the meaning of Clause (c) of Sub- Section 2 of Section 3 of the Estates Land Act, and that the lands are not the private lands of the landholder. The defendants are not mere trespassers. They are said to be tenants from year to year whose tenancy was put an end to, by a notice to quit which expired just before the Estates Land Act came into force. The learned pleader for the appellant scarcely contended that the suit lands were the private lands of the plaintiff, if he was a land-holder. But his main contention was, that the village of Puliyampattu was only an ordinary inam and not an unsettled Jagir . The short question for determination is whether the village of Puliyampattu is an unsettled Jagir . For the determination of the question at issue it is necessary, first of all to know the exact nature of the property, and the terms of the original grant, so far as they are ascertainable. The revenue of this and another village, Numbal, appears to have been granted towards the end of the 18th century by the Nabob of the Carnatic to a lady of his family. The villages were afterwards purchased by the Nabob himself, and were in 1782 assigned by him to an Armeniangentleman, the predecessor-in-title of the plaintiff. (Ex. V). At the time of the grant the villages appear to have been mirasi villages. The mirasi rights were from time to time acquired by the predecessors-in-title of the plaintiff, and long before 1843, they had become the owners of both the Kudivaram and Melvaram in the village of Puliyampattu. It is found by both the Lower Courts that no occupancy right had been acquired before the coming into force of the Estates Land Act either by grant, custom, or prescription by the defendant or any of his predecessors who were let in as tenants for the cultivation of the lands. If of course the lands are ryoti lands in an estate, the defendants may have acquired an occupancy right or may be in a. position to acquire it under the Estates Land Act. These villages have not been settled under the Permanent Settlement Regulation, nor have they been confirmed or enfranchised under the Inam rules. If the village is an unsettled Jagir within the meaning of Clause (c) the fact that the Jagirdar has subsequent to the grant, acquired the kudivaram interest in the whole or any portion of the lands sin the Jagir, cannot take the village out of the category of an estate, nor can by itself convert the ordinary ryoti lands in his Jagir into the private lands of the Jagirdar, (Of. Sections 8, 185 and definitions of ryoti and private land in Section 3 of the Madras Estates Land Act:) for in private lands strictly so called there is no division of interest as Melvaram and Kudivaram. It is unnecessary to decide the question (as to which there is some conflict of opinion in this court) whether land which was once ryoti can, except under the proviso to Section 185, be converted into private land ; See Zamindar of Challapalli v. Rajalapati Somayya , for the contention raised in the first court that the suit lands were private lands was abandoned in the first Court and the learned pleader for the appellant, as I have already said, scarcely argued the point here. His principal contention was that although the plaintiff and his predecessors were called Jagirdars and the suit village termed Jagir, it was really an Inam and was not an unsettled Jagir . He contended, if I understood him right, that there are three classes of Jagirs, one settled, another unsettled, and a third kind which was neither settled nor unsettled, which is a species of Inam. He says, that all Jagirs which paid or are liable to pay no land revenue to the Government, falls in the third class and its nature, i.e., whether it is an estate or not, can only be determined under Clause (d) of Sub-section 2 of Section 3 of the Estates Land Act, and such lands cannot fall within Clause (c). I confess I find some difficulty in understanding this distinction. All lands are liable to pay land revenue unless they are exempted by statute or by any binding engagement between the Government and the land owner. The British Government were not bound to recognise the revenue free grants of the previous Governments, though in practice they did recognise them. Baden-Powell s Land Revenue in British India, page 54. Secretary of State for India v. Bai Raj Bai (1915) L.R. 42 I.A. 229. I do not therefore think that the test formulated by the learned vakil for the appellant affords a correct or satisfactory differentiation between an ordinary Inam and a Jagir for the purpose of the Act.

(2.) Jagir is a Mahommadan term and Jagir tenure is described in various places in Baden-Powell s Land Tenures. In Volume I. at page 189 he says, "whether the Mahommadan Government consciously imitated the Hindu system of appointing certain chiefs to manage special territories especially frontierand mountain tracts I cannot determine; but at a very early stage they adopted the plan of granting to Court favourites, to, ministers of state, and to military officers, the right to collect the revenue of a certain area of country, and to take the amount collected either to support their state and dignity, or in the case of military chiefs to equip a body of troops, to be availed for the royal service"; at page 190 he says "a great number of assignments of revenue in this way grew into Landlord Tenures, very much as the "Zamindary" estates did. This was much facilitated by the fact that the grantee was allowed, and indeed expected, in many cases, to conduct the revenue administration in his own way, and of course he had (or assumed) the full right to all unoccupied or waste land in the Jagir". Again at page 257 in which he deals with land revenue administration he says thus : "One other feature of the Moghul system should be mentioned. Just as the Hindus divided the whole country into the royal domains and chief s domains, so the Moghuls apportioned their territory into "Khalsa and Jagir" lands.... The "Jagir" lands were divided into blocks or estates which were made over for life, (the grants became hereditary at a later stage) to certain military commanders, ministers and courtiers, who took the revenue for their own support or that of a military force which they were bound to maintain. Sometimes waste tracts were granted in Jagir, and sometimes outlying and troublesome districts. The Jagirdar managed the whole, increased the cultivation, and applied the revenue to his own support, and to expenses of the administration and the pay of troops." Jagirs unlike Inams were usually for life though in course of time they also became permanent and heritable. An Inam, as its name imports, was a present, or gift either to an individual or for a public purpose, while Jagirs generally implied conditions of service or a reward for service, (Baden-Powell s Land Revenue, page 118). The distinction drawn by that learned writer (Land Revenue, page 116), that an Inam implied grant of land with a remission partial or total of the revenue, while a Jagir was a grant merely of land revenue is not one which is now accepted in this Presidency, as an Inam grant is also presumed to be a grant of land revenue only. At the same time it is difficult if not impossible to frame a definition or even give a description of a Jagir so as to distinguish it from an ordinary Inam as many jagir grants were mere presents to individuals, while many service grants are called Inams. In an appeal from Bombay, the Judicial Committee in discussing the nature of a Jagir tenure (known as Saranjam in the Mahratta country,) say that Inam is a term of mere generic significance applicable to a Government grant as a whole, Raghoji Rao Saheb v. Lakshman Rao Saheb (1912) I.L.R. 35 B. 639 P.C.. In fact villages termed Jagirsand Paliams were settled by the Inam Commissioner under the Inam rules. See classification of Inams in the Inam rules, page 181, Vol. 2 Board s Standing Orders, 1907; also Chingleput District Manual, page 356 where two Jagir villages are classed under enfranchised Inams. The three Kaliyarayan Jagirs in the South Arcot District were settled by the Inam Commissioner and are included in the schedule to the Impartible Estates Act.

(3.) The word Jagir occurs along with unsettled Paliam in Clause (c). There is a definition of an Estate in identical terms in the Proprietary Estates Village Service Act and the Survey and Boundaries Act, and there also the same collocation occurs. Further in giving illustrations of permanently settled estates, a Zamindari, Jagir, Mitta and Paliam are mentioned. The Jagirs whether settled or unsettled which are classed as estates are presumably of the same character as Zamindaries, Paliams and the like, i.e., they are proprietary Estates or as more correctly described by Baden-Powell as "Zemindar or Landlord Tenure over Estates." It will be seen from the description given above of the origin and nature of Jagir grants and the Revenue policy which dictated them, that the Jagirdar was in a large number of cases exercising control over the tract assigned to him and was administering the same; he in fact was exercising governmental functions in subordination, it may be to a superior, and was holding his jagir on condition of military or political service. There were cases however of jagir grants where the land revenue was assigned merely for private enjoyment as for instance, subsistence, and these cases are now indistinguishable from ordinary Inam grant; and as regards these, I think, the principle applicable to Inams ought to be applied in determining the character, as estates, for the purpose of the Estates Land Act. It is only the first class of Jagir grants that came subsequently to be classed along with ordinary Zemindaries or Paliams, and I think it is to such estates that Clause (c) applies. In fact, it is said, that a jagir differs from a zemindari in that the revenue or Peshkush payable by the latter was fixed at some proportion of the receipts about the time of the settlement, while a Jagirdir pays merely a lump sum not expressly calculated on such a basis. In the case of the Jagir of Arni this payment was called a "nuzzur" or gift. See North Arcot District Manual, Vol. 1, 2nd Edn. (1895) page 281.