Local Self‐Government in Northern India
| Date | 01 January 1927 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1927.tb02281.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1927 |
Local
Self
-Government
in
Northern
India
By
SIR
S.
H.
FRHMANTLE,
C.S.I.,
C.I.E.
[Read before
the
Institute
of
Public Administration, London, 18th November,
19261
FEEL very much honoured by the invitation extended to me by
I
your Institute, the
first
I
think in its history, to read
a
paper on an
Indian subject.
The choice being left to me
I
chose Local Government (or
as
we call
it
in India Local Self-Government) in Northern India, partly because
I
thought
it
would be the most likely to interest your members, and partly
because of its very great importance
at
the present time.
It
has not,
I
think, been sufficiently realized (certainly not by Indians) what
an
immense influence will be created for good or
ill
in rural India by the
changes
in
the system
of
local government introduced with the political
reforms of
1919.
In fact, their effect
is
to
revolutionize the administration
of the country districts which contain
go
per cent. of the population.
The title of the paper is Local Self-Government
in
Northern India,
but
I
found when
I
came to write it that it was best to confine it to the
province where
I
served my
full
time and which
is
familiar to me from
end to end. That province
is
the United Provinces of Agra and
Oudh,
shortened to The United Provinces or U.P. That province occupies the
area between the Punjab
on
the north-west
and
Bihar and Bengal on
the south-east.
It
forms the upper portion of the valley of the Ganges
and its tributaries with outcrops into the Himalayan hills on the north
and the plateau of Central India on the south.
It
has
an
area of
107,000
square miles and
a
population of
48
millions, figures very similar to those
of the British Isles.
It
is divided into
48
districts which average
z,ooo
square miles, or
about the same as the larger English counties such
as
Norfolk
or Lincoln
or Somerset. Each district has
as
its
chief executive officer
a
Magistrate
and Collector, also
known
as
the District Magistrate or the District
Officer, who
is
the representative
of
Government in the area for most
purposes.
A
district is divided into from three to eight sub-divisions
known
as
tahsils,
which average
400
square miles in area.
At
the head
58
Local
Self-Gooernment in Northern India
of each is
a
Tahsildar, subordinate to the District Officer, but with similar
functions.
The story of local government
in
Northern India should perhaps start
with the village communities. These originated in the Aryan immigra-
tion, the date of which is lost in antiquity or in subsequent colonization
by Rajput tribes.
A
group of colonists, descendants or dependants
perhaps of one patriarch, took possession of
a
block of land, reclaiming
where necessary the jungle, and this they held
at
first
in common, sharing
out the actual fields by lot. The characteristics of these village com-
munities were very similar to those of the English Communities described
by
Mr.
J.
R.
Green in his
Short
History
of
the
English
People.
"
The holdings of the free men,"
Mr.
Green
says,
"
clustered round
a
moot
hill or sacred tree where the community met from time to time to order its own
industry and to frame its
own
laws. Here plough land and meadow land were
shared
in
due lot among the villagers, and field and homestead passed from man
to man. Here strife of farmer
with
farmer was settled according to the customs
of the township
as
its elder men stated them, and the wrongdoer was judged and
his
fine assessed
by
the kinsfolk, and here men were chosen to follow headmen
or ealdorman to hundred court or
war."
We read in the Institutes of Manu that
a
general assembly of the
freemen met every year to elect the village council, who were presumed
to represent the five social elements of the community, i.e. priests,
soldiers, agriculturists and traders, labourers, and the offsprings of mixed
marriages. This council
of
five, or panchhayet, administered the affairs
of the village according
to
Aryan law and custom, and one of these was
the sarpanch, or headman, though at first elected the office tended to
become hereditary, and in that case the general assembly of freemen
became more a consultative than an elective body. These village com-
munities with their self-governing body retained their identity throughout
the wars and tumults of the ages.
There is no doubt that even under the highly centralized rule of the
Mauryon and Gupta Kings between the third century
B.C.
and the seventh
century
A.D.
these little village republics enjoyed the right to administer
their
own
affairs. When political unity broke up, as often followed on
the death of a strong ruler, they naturally obtained still more independ-
ence, and in the long period of internal wars and the quarrels of petty
chieftains which intervened between the time of the Hindu Kings
and
the Mahomedan conquest, they formed the one stable element
in
the
country. An inscription of the ninth century quoted by Hovel1
in
his
Hislory
of
Aryan
Rule
in
India,
records an agreement entered into by
local chieftains with the headman of
a
village or group of villages by which
the former solemnly promised when they and their retainers were fighting,
to avoid inflicting injury upon villages or their property, and undertook
to pay compensation for any activator who was injured and any village
59
To continue reading
Request your trial