96
Article
Superior
Peasants
of Central
Bengal
and
Their
Land
Management
in the
Late
Nineteenth
Century*
Nariaki Nakazato
I
Recent discussion on the rural hirtory of modern Bengal has centred on the problems concerning the upper strata of the peasantry.') These peasants played a pivotal role in the making of modern Bengal rural society. They not only dominated agrarian economy and society, but were also in the forefront of peasant movements and nationalist poli-tics in the countryside. In central Bengal, too, they formed a formi-dable force. The fact that the Indigo Disturbances which swept over the whole of central Bengal in 1859-62 were organized under the lead-ership of this class bears an unmistakable evidence of their power and influence.2 ) This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the economic character of the upper strata of the peasantry by enquir-ing into their land management in central Bengal, Nadia and Jessore in particular, in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
* This Paper was presented at the 51st session of the Indian History Congress held in Calcutta from 28 to 30 December 1990.
中里成章 Nariaki NAKAZATO, Kobe University, Economic History of Modern
Bengal. Other publications include:
" Land Market in the Dacca Division of Eastern Bengal
, 1870-1910 " (in Japa-nese), The Memoirs of the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 93, 1983.
" Zamindars' Land Management and Local Society in the Dacca Division of Eastern Bengal " (in Japanese), The Memoirs of the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 103, 1987.
97
The upper strata of the peasantry were composed of manifold groups. A contemporary observer of Bengal rural society grouped them into one category and called them " superior peasants."3 Loose as it is, this group-ing has the advantage of enablgroup-ing us to take the whole of the dominant rural classes of peasant stock in one view. The class of the " superior peasants " would consist of three sub-groups. First, it comprises the privi-leged peasants who held a large holding on favourable terms and maintained a social status a cut higher than common cultivators. They were known under a variety of names in various parts of Bengal. They were called jotedars in Rangpur, Dinajpur and some other districts, haoladars in Bakarganj, aymadars in Midnapore, gantidars in Jessore and the 24-Par-ganas, thickadars in parts of the 24-Par24-Par-ganas, chuckdars in the Sunder-bans, and so forth.° The second group is the village heads who were also known under diverse designations such as mandals, pradhans, matabars and paramaniks. It is true that the village heads' influence as an official of the village community was already on the decline in the late nineteenth
century. As will be shown later, however, many of them, with broad
acres under their control, still retained economic power in rural society. Lastly, the substantial peasants having no particular title will have to be added. This definition of the "superior preasants" will hold good so far at least as the nineteenth century, if not the twentieth century, is concerned.° This paper aims at studying how these " superior peasants " operated their large holdings. Central Bengal, which roughly corresponds to the Presidency division, has been taken up for investigation, primarily be-cause this region is favoured with exceptionally rich source materials. Especially, the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Indigo Commis-sion of 1860 are a mine of rare information on the minute details of the superior peasants' economic life. The number of peasants that gave evidence before the Commission added up to seventy-four in all. Out of them, nine belonged to the privileged class of gantidars and jotedars. The term gantidar technically meant a raiyat who held direct from the zamindar, irrespective of the size of his holding. Usually, however, only
those who held a considerable area were called gantidars.° They were
mainly found in the western parts of the Jessore district, whereas in the east they were called jotedars.7) The Indigo Commission classed the rest of the peasants as raiyats. As many as twenty-five of them had the title of Mandal, while twelve held that of Biswas.8) Of course, the prime aim
98 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
of those gantidars, jotedars, mandals, etc. was to complain about the op-pressive system of indigo cultivation. At the same time, however, many of them related the graphic story of their agricultural operation in reply to Commissioners' questions. I will try, as far as possible, to advance my argument on the basis of the concrete factual data gathered from their evidence.
Before setting about an analysis of the Minutes of Evidence, we would do better to have a general view of the land distribution in central Bengal and to form a rough idea about how our peasant witnesses stand in rela-tion to the peasants at large.
II
In 1887 the then Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, issued an instruction to pro-vincial governments to conduct an enquiry into " the actual condition of the lower classes of the population ".9) The results of this survey, which has come to be known as the Dufferin Enquiry, show that rural society of central Bengal in the late nineteenth century was in a fairly polarized state in terms of landholding.
In the district of Jessore 798 " homesteads " in nine large villages were investigated into. More than half of them were found to possess a very small holding of about 2 bighas") or no land at all, while those who held more than 10 bighas numbered 155, or 19 per cent of the total.") (See table 1) The latter class was reported to be moneylenders in many cases and to comprise " the numerous lakirajdars, who are mostly Hindus of good caste, and still more numerous gantidars, who are of all castes and many are Mahomedans ". They generally had " under-tenants and others
Table 1 Landholding in Nine Villages of Jessore
SOURCE: Smith Report, paras. 80-81 in RCLCP. NOTE: aThis class was generally dependent on labour.
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal 99
in various degrees of dependence on them ".12) In view of the fact that an authentic survey of Jessore which was undertaken in the early 1870s put the average size of a raiyat's farm at 10 bighas,I-3) the above figures might err on the side of overrating the poverty of common cultivators. Yet it cannot be denied that a hierarchical structure of landholding had taken firm hold in rural society of this district.
In Nadia the Dufferin Enquiry was conducted in a somewhat different manner. In this district those who had less than 10 bighas were treated not as " cultivators ", but as " labourers " on the ground that not having their own ploughs, they partly worked for wages and partly cultivated their small holdings by hired ploughs. Table 2 epitomizes the results of the survey undertaken in three villages in the south of the district.1-4) It is worthy of note that small holdings not exceeding 15 bighas accounted for about half, while on the other extreme there were a handful of quite large farms which measured between 60 and 80 bighas.
It is rather hard to form a reasonably accurate estimate of the size of an economic holding for nineteenth century Bengal. But perhaps we may feel justified in assuming that with a holding of 10 to 15 bighas a small peasant family could manage to eke out a living and that with 30 bighas
Table 2 Landholding in Three Villages of Nadia
100 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
they could enjoy a life which was comfortable by the modest standard of rural Bengal.'5) A grim picture will emerge when we take a second look at tables 1 and 2 with this assumption in mind. The poorer classes who in all likelihood could not make both ends meet formed a very thick layer in Jessore and Nadia, whereas the middle peasants were in a de-cided minority.
Against the backdrop of such general poverty, most of the peasants who gave evidence before the Indigo Commission will stand out as very substantial. As stated before, there were a total of 74 peasant witnesses. Information about their landholding, which is unfortunately only partially available, is all summarized in table 3. It is notable that three-fourths of them held a large holding of 30 bighas or more. And we can count among them twelve men of property whose holdings measured more than 100 bighas. Those who were in possession of really large lands exceeding 200 bighas were all gantidars. It will follow from this that our witnesses were well representative of the upper stratum of the peasantry. How then did they operate their broad acres?
III
Let us begin our analysis with a description of some typical cases. Among the numerous interesting cases with which the Minutes of Evi-dence provide us, the following four, i.e. Beni Madhub Mittra, Ameer Mullick, Ameer Biswas and Santosh Mundal, seem to deserve a careful consideration. The first two peasants were big gantidars, while the third was a jotedar, the last being a substantial mandal.
Table 3 Landholding of the Peasant Witnesses
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal 101
A body of powerful gantidars who lived in the village of Goaltolli in the Bagdi thana [i.e., police circle] of the Nadia district had been offer-ing bold resistance to an oppressive indigo planter. Beni Madhub Mittra appears to have been a leader of this group.16) He had old pattas, or deeds of raiyati lease, which the Raja of Nadia had issued about one hundred years ago. It was on account of these pattas that he was ex-empted from enhancement of rents. His jama, or rental, amounted to over 200 rupees. That is to say, the size of his land would have exceeded 400 bighas even on a conservative estimate. In addition, he held some rent-free lands as well. He shared all of these lands with one Madub
Chunder Mittra, who worked for a sugar factory at Kote Chandpore. In all likelihood the Mittras were Kayasthas by caste.
On his extensive ganti he had forty or fifty khudkasht raiyats and some seventy pahikasht raiyats. They were mostly Muslims. He collected rents from them, and therefore regarded them as his under-tenants. However, he himself lived in Calcutta, leaving his wife and family in his native village and entrusting the business of rent collection to his gomashta, Mohesh Chunder Bose. He practiced a mukhtar, or an attorney, in the office of the receiver of the Supreme Court in Calcutta. Thus the upper layer of the superior peasants overlapped with the so-called bhadralok class.
Ameer Mullick's case provides another fine example of the gantidar' s life.17) He was a renowned gantidar who lived in the Khanpore village in the Bagdah thana of the Nadia district. He was also quite well-known for his recent conversion from Islam to Christianity. He had a patta which had originally been given in the name of his first cousin in 1805 or 1808. His ganti, for which he paid an annual rental of Rs. 58, extended over two villages of the Bagdah thana, namely, Khanpore and Adampore. He let out his lands in Khanpore to 109 undertenants and those in Adampore to another 50 or 60. It is of special interest that he admitted freely before the Commission that he " had neither plough nor bullocks " despite possessing a very large holding. He had a handsome residence in Khanpore where his big family, consisting of his wife, seven sons, one daughter and four grandchildren, lived together. It contained a pucka [brick-built] house with three rooms and some kutcha [thatched] houses, all of which were surrounded by high pucka walls. He also had one stable and two golas, or barns, outside these premises.
102 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
The third case is Amir Biswas. He was a Muslim jotedar who resided in the village of Matkoomra in the Hobra thana of the Barasat district.'8) And he was the person that took the lead in organizing a peasant struggle against indigo cultivation in Hobra in the spring of 1859.'9) Ashley. Eden, who had served in the district as Magistrate and Collector dur-ing the Indigo Disturbances, naturally knew him very well. As testi-fied by Eden before the Indigo Commission, he was " one of the most influential and respectable ryots in the district " and " a jotedar with large property ". With an annual rental of Rs. 82 his holding is estimated to have amounted at least to 160 bighas.
Just like Beni Madhub Mittra and Ameer Mullick, he leased out his lands to dependent raiyats who numbered about twenty to twenty-five in all. At the same time, however, it is interesting to note that he had three ploughs and twelve oxen of his own. Taking this fact into consideration with another noteworthy fact that he was thoroughly conversant with farming, that of tobacco in particular, it would appear that Ameer Biswas was pursuing direct cultivation of tobacco in part of his large holding. In addition to this cash crop, he seems to have raised early rice, peas and linseed as well. Further, he had an old maurushi [hereditary] patta on the basis of which he paid rents at the same rate for all the lands that he held. He could read and write Bengali, while his nephew could read the Koran. Although he himself did not know Arabic, he was rich enough to engage a mulla, or a rural priest, for the purpose of reading out the Koran.
Lastly, Santosh Mundal was a substantial mandal who lived in the villages of Pattarghatta and Govindpore in the Hantara thana of the Nadia district.20) Neither rental nor area of his holding is known. He had a patta unlimited as to time which he seems to have obtained in 1835 or 1836 when the zamindar measured his lands for the renewal of assessment. He possessed his own ploughs. He had a knowledge of English just enough to read parts of the Bengal Rent Act of 1859.
The prominent feature in his economic life was that he followed trade and usury along with land management. He had a modi's shop, or a grocer's shop, in his village where he sold daily necessaries, clothes, and wood for burning bricks. He also lent money and rice there. What is more, he engaged in speculations both in grains and in land. He told the Indigo Commission that he had once got Rs. 790 by sending a large cargo of wheat to Calcutta. He also told about an interesting case of a land
103
transaction he himself performed. A holding of 10 bighas in another village with an annual rental of Rs. 10 had been abandoned by a raiyat. Santosh Mundal decided to take it, anticipating that he would be able to get Rs. 30 out of it. But not content with merely collecting rents, he went on even further and made arrangements with the raiyats of that village to
sow certain crops for him. His ultimate aim in this case thus appears to have been to establish a secure foothold in the village and gain control over its agricultural production through making an advance to villagers.
IV
Now let us compare the findings from the above four cases with other evidence as to the agrarian relations of central Bengal.
It has been pointed out that Ameer Mullick did not have any ploughs. This fact most probably indicates that he had completely dissociated him-self from the direct process of production, turning into a pure middle-man who lived solely on rent income.21) Now, table 4 embodies all the available data about the land management by the peasants, inclusive of smaller peasants as well, who testified before the Indigo Commission. As is evident from this table, only a small number of superior peasants belonged to this class. Particularly, it is notable that both of the cases where peasants owned no ploughs fell under the gantidar class,221 while none of the peasants who were labelled as "raiyats " by the Indigo Com-mission disclaimed their possession of ploughs. It would appear from this that at this particular juncture the pure rentier class of peasant stock was mainly confined to a section of the gantidars and jotedars alone. The other superior peasants combined subletting with direct cultivation.
In point of fact Ramshunker Sen reported on the land management by two fairly large raiyats as follows:
Another [raiyat], holding 90 beegahs and who owns three ploughs, has 32 beegahs under dhan [paddy] and 21/2 beegahs occupied by his homestead and date garden, while he has sublet the remainder to five under-tenants. A third, who holds a tenure of 100 beegahs, and has but two ploughs, cultivates 25 beegahs as nij-jote [demesne], while he has let out 75 beegahs to other tenants.23)
These two raiyats who owned 90 bighas and 100 bighas respectively did not let out all of their lands, but set a fairly large portion apart for their
104 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal
own cultivation by their own ploughs.
In an opposite position to Ameer Mullick was Amir Biswas who actively carried out commercial agriculture. Admittedly, Amir Biswas seems to have let out a major part of his holding to his dependent raiyats. How-ever, it may safely be presumed from his possession of as many as three ploughs and of an intimate knowledge of farming that he had still retained the character of the cultivator of the soil, not having altogether severed his connections with the direct production process. This will lead us to a supposition that the gantidar-jotedar class of central Bengal around 1860 fell into two sub-groups: the rentier type and the land operator type.
It goes without saying that the latter, more enterprising type of peasants actually cut across the border between the " gantidars " and " jotedars " and the "raiyats ". Among the " raiyats " who testified before the Indigo Commission Santosh Mundal may be taken as representative of this enter-prising type. And what should be emphasized here is that Santosh Mundal was not an exception. In the late nineteenth century there were numerous well-to-do raiyats who were actively engaged in commercial agriculture and trade. Especially, the manufacture of date sugar appears to have absorbed a significant part of their economic energies during this period. It was reported that the cultivation of date trees was " springing up in all directions in Jessore ".24) And at the centre of this movement were " the more prosperous ryots who have large jotes [holdings] ".25)
Some of them went one step further to establish their own refineries, on which Westland writes as follows:
Near Keshabpur, however, a large number of ryots manufacture their
SOURCE: RIC, passim.
NOTE: P1 and C respectively indicate that the peasant has ploughs or cattle, although their number cannot be specified.
106 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
own sugar and sell it to the exporters only after manufacture. . . . These are the larger ryots in the villages, many of whom combine commercial dealings with agriculture. They receive the goor [mo-lasses] from the ryots in their vicinity, and sometimes also purchase it in the adjacent hats [weekly markets], and after manufacturing what they thus purchase, they take their sugar to some exporting mart and sell it there to the larger merchant.26)
Thus the substantial raiyats of the late nineteenth century, not content with merely pursuing agriculture, trade or usury, embarked upon small rural industry, making inroads into the sphere of traditional sugar refiners.
The superior peasants' holdings were operated under various forms. It will easily be seen from table 4 that labour power utilized by them fell into three types : servants (including ploughmen), dependent raiyats (also referred to under different names such as under-tenants, under-raiyats, koljana raiyats, and korfadars) and bargadars [i.e., sharecroppers].27) An analysis of these three major forms will be attempted in the following section. Here it will be sufficient to emphasize one conspicuous feature. As has clearly been shown in three of the four cases described above, the superior peasants of our day, especially those who were in possession of a large holding exceeding, say, one hundred bighas, mainly relied on dependent raiyats to put their lands under cultivation. And even when they kept part of their holding as demesne, they preferred to employ servants or ploughmen rather than to let it out to bargadars. This finding based on the Indigo Commission Report agrees with the observation by J. Westland who reported on the land management by gantidars as follows:
Immediately above this jumma-holder [common raiyat] there is an-other class of ryot whose holding extends over a village or half a village, who never cultivates with his own hand, but sometimes has fields under cultivation by his servants. This class is, in Naral and Magurah, called " jotedar," and in the west of the district is called
gantidar " . . .28)
It is characteristic of the gantidar-jotedar class that they had a well-documented right to their holdings. Some of them, like Ameer Mullick, could specify before the Indigo Commission the year when they obtained their pattas from their zamindar, although those pattas were very old
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal 107 ones, dating back to the turn of the eighteenth century. Moreover, they enjoyed very favourable rent rates which could not normally be enhanced. This indicates that there were some special circumstances in relation to the grant of pattas. Besides, some of the gantidars and jotedars, like Amir Biswas, had maurushi pattas which accorded a " hereditary tenure at a fixed rent ".29) This tenure appears to have been rather rare and of special nature in Jessore. The number of tenures inclusive of patnis as well as maurushis added up only to 296 in Naldi, one of the largest parganas in Jessore which extended over 464,100 acres.30) What is more, it is notable that only a small number of "raiyats " who testified before the Indigo Commission seem to have had the maurushi tenure. (See Appendix be-low). In this way, in terms of tenurial right, the gantidars and jotedars
of central Bengal were clearly differentiated from the rest of the superior peasants.
When we examine religion and caste of the superior peasants, we see that they were composed of really diverse elements. (See Appendix be-low). They were of all religions including Hinduism, Islam and Chris-tianity. Moreover, the Hindu peasants were of a very wide variety of castes. For instance, Ram Churn Biswas, who held 133 bighas and knew how to read and write Bengali, belonged to the Kaibartta caste,31) a prosperous agricultural caste of central Bengal, while Chunder Ghose, who was also able to read and write, was a Goala [cowherd],32) which was reported to be " generally poor ".33) There were also the cases of a Malakar [gardener] who was a gantidar, a Chandal [outcaste cultivator] who held the title of Biswas, and a Kayastha who was a raiyat in pos-session of two ploughs.34 The superior peasants of central Bengal thus consisted of motley social groups in which all religious groups and vari-ous Hindu castes, high and low, were well represented.
V
As has been pointed out in the preceding section, the superior peasants of central Bengal utilized three types of labour power, that is, servants, dependent raiyats and bargadars, to operate their lands. Let us take a close look at these three classes of people.
To begin with, it has already been noted that the bargadars do not appear to have been so common as the dependent raiyats or the servants. They were touched upon in contemporary literature concerning central
108 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
Bengal only on comparatively rare occasions. For instance, no more than three peasant witnesses before the Indigo Commission made reference to the bargadars.35) And Ramshunker Sen defined the bargadars as " culti-vators who hold the khamar [demesne] lands of the jotedar" .36) It is
true that the Dufferin Enquiry in a Nadia village brought out an inter-esting fact that " the majority of the cultivators have no land of their own, and hold 10 or 12 bighas of burga land only ".37) But this village, comprising no less than 71 artisan families in the total of 200, cannot be deemed as a representative case.38) Most probably the barga system in central Bengal was confined to sporadic spots here and there, and to the demesne lands of certain gantidars and jotedars.39)
The servant and the ploughman are much more frequently referred to in the evidence of the peasants. According to the Dufferin Enquiry, the servant system was closely connected with a particular form of rural credit. When the Enquiry was undertaken, it was found out that the rural poor were virtually debarred from the credit market, because the moneylender was not willing to deal with the landless labourers or poor cultivators, who utterly lacked personal credit. On the other hand, it is said, " holders of such big jotes [holdings] as 70 or 80 bighas " had to employ servants, " even if there are several adult male members in the family " .40) There-fore, " if people of this class [i.e., poorer class] require a lump sum of money, they engage to serve some well-to-do cultivator for a certain term, and get the requisite advance ".41) And it appears that the terms of contract showed a wide variation with the village. From a village in south Nadia, for example, it was reported as follows:
... an able-bodied agricultural servant gets Rs. 6-8 per month. He gets also 1 bigha or 25 cottahs of land from the employer. The servant pays the rent, but all the cost of cultivation has to be borne by the employer. A sum of Rs. 12 will have to be advanced to him and be recovered in 12 monthly instalments of Re. 1. If the servant happens to be a resident of another village than that of his employer, he will get Rs. 3 a month as salary, and also food, cloth and land as mentioned above.42)
In another village a servant got " Rs. 5 monthly, a little oil and some food every day, and one dhoti [loin-cloth] and one gamcha [large towel] a year, and a bigha of land ".43) In a third village, however, land was not usually
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal 109 given to a servant.44) Thus the servant system of central Bengal was a sort of tied labour system in which a poor peasant undertook to work on a yearly or seasonal basis for a big peasant for the main purpose of obtain-ing a lump sum of money on credit. Under this system the servant was tied to his master with an advance of money and, in some cases, with a lease of miniature land. The question whether the servant lived in the premises of his master's house is another important index of his de-pendence. From Rangpur it is reported that farm servants (krishans) generally lived in their master's house.45) In Midnapur, too, there were permanently employed labourers who boarded in the house of their em-ployers, but they were very few in number.") Unfortunately, however, no information is available as to central Bengal in this respect.
The most conspicuous feature of the agrarian system in central Bengal was the prevalence of the dependent raiyats (under-raiyats), who were called korfas or koljanas in the Bengali language. As the Survey and Settlement Operations brought to light, central Bengal was the region where the under-raiyats held a high proportion of land under their direct possession. The largest figure of all Bengal was recorded by Jessore with 27 per cent, which was followed by Khulna, 24-Parganas and Nadia with 13, 11 and 9 per cent respectively.47) And it was found out in Jessore that the number of under-raiyati rights roughly equalled that of the rights of settled raiyats.48) The proportion of the former to the latter might have been even higher in the late nineteenth century, for M. Finu-cane, an officer who conducted a special survey in Jessore in 1883, re-marked that " the number of korfa or sub-raiyats in Jessore is certainly as large, and according to the statement made to me, much larger than the number of raiyats paying rent to the zamindar direct ".49)
Finucane's survey brought out a set of significant facts on the relation-ships between the superior peasants and the under-raiyats. In the first place, he pointed out that the under-raiyats virtually enjoyed the " right of occupancy just as strong as the rights of those whose sub-tenants they are ".50) Not only could they transfer their holdings by sale at their own will, but they could not be evicted from land as long as they paid rent to their superiors. In point of fact, Ramshunker Sen went to the extent of saying that the raiyat and the under-raiyat " live and move on terms of equality " in everyday life.51) However, this is not that the superior peas-ants did not have the power of dominance over the other peaspeas-ants. On
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the contrary, their social influence was certainly to be reckoned with. For instance, the gantidars of Jessore had the privilege of " receiving fees for every marriage, birth, or death amongst his ryots " . 52) And the indigo planters knew well that the best way of inducing reluctant peasants to cultivate indigo was to win the superior peasants to their side. Con-versely, when a gantidar or a mandal stopped sowing indigo, all of his dependent raiyats followed his example.
Secondly, Finucane's survey revealed the state of things at the village level. Take for instance the village Paikpara of the Naldanga estate. It was a small village measuring only about 250 bighas. Mandi Laskar was the jotedar of the whole of Paikpara at the time of the Permanent Settlement. When Finucane visited the village in 1883, there were ten descendants of Mandi. They had held the entire village at Rs. 50 until 1883, when their rental was for the first time enhanced to Rs. 192. In exchange for this enhancement, however, the zamindar was compelled to legally confirm their right to hold land at a fixed rate in perpetuity. They had about 250 korfa raiyats who paid at from five annas to Re. 1 per bigha for paddy land. The rates paid by these korfadars had been unaltered for generations and they were in every respect treated as occupancy raiyats.53)
The second case is the village Gowalpara of the Syedpur Trust Estate. This village, containing about 5,660 bighas, was much larger than Paikpara. There were 192 raiyats and all of them were called gantidars, just because they paid rent direct to the zamindar. They were exempted from
en-hancement of rents on account of their maurushi rights. In point of fact the rent rates had never been changed since 1829-30. They had about 400 korfa raiyats under them. For instance, Hari Nath Majumdar who held 77 bighas of land had 37 korfa raiyats. He reserved six bighas in his khas [direct] possession and let out the remainder to his korfa raiyats. The size of a korfa holding was very small. One Julai Korfadar held 2 bighas 8 cottahs at Rs. 4, while another korfa raiyat, Ramdhan by name, had 10 cottahs of homestead land at Re. 1. Hari Nath annually collected Rs. 139-15 from his korfa raiyats and paid Rs. 96 to the Syedpore estate. Thus he realized Rs. 43-15 a year, or a 31 per cent returns on his rent collection. The returns of the order of 30 per cent cannot be deemed very high, but in all likelihood the average rate of returns appears to have come near this mark.54) And Hari Nath could not enhance the rent rate, for " he [korfa raiyat] has held for three or four generations ".55)
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal 111 At any rate, the relationships between the superior peasant and the dependent raiyat in the late nineteenth century were not so harsh or ex-ploitative as might sometimes be imagined. The rights the dependent raiyat enjoyed were as good as occupancy right, except that the rates of rent were one-fourth to one-third higher than those of a raiyat. There-fore it may safely be said that the terms of the korfa system of central Bengal were decidedly moderate as compared with those of the jotedar-bargadar system in Rangpur.
According to Westland, the origin of the ganti and jote tenures is trace-able to three circumstances.56) Quoting a report of the 1780s to the effect that " the gantidar or jotedar was usually also the farmer of the land ad-joining his own holding ", he indicated that the ganti tenure originated from the arrangements for rent farming. That is, the zamindars gave cer-tain land on a low rate to a person who undertook to collect and pay in rents. And it is interesting that even after an interval of ninety years Westland could still find a trace of such close connection between ganti and farming. He remarked: " In many places the gantidar of the whole or part of a village is still looked upon as the person who naturally occupies the position of farmer in some adjacent lands ".
Secondly, the zamindars, who faced serious financial difficulties in the tumultuous years subsequent to the Permanent Settlement, tried to raise money by granting privileged ganti tenures at a premium. Gantis of rela-tively recent origin, Westland says, mostly had their root in this arrange-ment. On the other hand, the ganti and jote in the east of Jessore were ascribed to a different origin, namely, reclamation. Westland assumed that they had been granted at the time of the extension of cultivation, if not at the time of original reclamation.
It will be seen from the above that the origins of the gantidars and jotedars are not directly related to the process of the differentiation of the peasantry. On the other hand, the under-raiyati tenancies seem to have
been created under multifarious circumstances. As many as eleven
grounds for creating them were enumerated in the Survey and Settlement Report of Jessore published in 1925.57) It is notable that four of them were connected with land transfer in one form or another. For instance, there was an arrangement known under the name of malik barati in which a poor peasant, instead of having recourse to out-and-out sale, let out the land to a substantial peasant by means of a maurushi patta, keeping
prac-112 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
tically very little margin of profit. Yet in view of the fact that the market for raiyati holdings had not come into full-fledged existence before the
passing of the Bengal Tenancy Act in 1885,58) we should be very cautious
in inferring the state of things in the nineteenth century on the analogy of the conditions in the 1920s. On balance, the most that can be said on the origin of the gantidar-korfadar relationship would be that there is not posi-tive evidence to show that it had been formed as a result of the differentia-tion of the peasantry through land transfer.
VI
We have discussed above that the superior peasants of central Bengal can be divided into two sub-classes. When we examine their legal right to land, we find that a clear line of demarcation can be drawn between the gantidars and jotedars, who mostly held land under a maurushi patta or a very old special patta, and the other substantial " raiyats ". Better tenurial rights must have assured the former a higher social status. From the point of view of economic history, however, the demarcation line should be drawn in a different way. It has been suggested that distinction should rather be made between the " rentier type " and the " land op-erator type ".
The " rentier type " is a group of superior peasants who had already dissociated themselves from the process of direct production. Having neither ploughs nor cattle, they had turned into purely parasitic land-holders.
The " land operator type " held their own ploughs and retained part of their large holding as demesne. The demesne land was mostly culti-vated by the servants or ploughmen, whereas the letting out to share-croppers was rather sparingly resorted to. The rest of the lands was leased out to the under-raiyats, or korfadars, on fairly easy terms.
Considering that both types of superior peasants mainly relied on the under-raiyats for the cultivation of their broad acres, it may safely be concluded that the korfa or under-raiyati system formed the dominant agrarian relationship of central Bengal in the late nineteenth century.
At the same time, however, it must be stressed that enterprising peasants had sprung up from among the superior peasants of " land operator type ". They not only engaged in trade and money-lending or in specu-lation in grains and land but also set about establishing small rural
in-dustry, viz. sugar refineries in the case of Jessore. In other words, the two trends of parasitism and enterprise co-existed in central Bengal in the late nineteenth century, although the former appears to have been
stronger than the latter.
It is under such a mixed situation that the Bengal Tenancy Act was enacted in 1885 and began to intervene. This Act stipulated that a raiyat who held more than one hundred bighas should be presumed to be a tenure-holder.59) According to this yardstick, a fair proportion of the indigo peasants listed in table 3, 12 out of 43 to be exact, would be auto-matically elevated to the status of tenure-holders. Among them were in-cluded not only gantidars but upper " raiyats " as well. Moreover, as is well known, the Bengal Tenancy Act gave legal sanction to the sub-letting of occupancy holdings.60) These two provisions must have operated to-wards strengthening the above-mentioned parasitic tendency, while in-directly suppressing the development of enterprise among the superior peasants. Of course various factors were at work on the growth of par-asitism, but the institutional factor like the Bengal Tenancy Act was
certainly among the most important of them.
Our findings on the case of central Bengal differ in a few significant respects from what has recently been argued on the economic history of rural Bengal. In the first place, the present discussion seems to presume that the privileged peasants like gantidars and jotedars came into being as a result of the differentiation of the peasantry. " Differentiation " is an elusive term. But if we take it as the process in which the peasantry gets polarized into landlord and tenant through land transfer, then we have to say that " differentiation " in that sense did not take place in Bengal before the end of the nineteenth century. As is well-known, it was not until the 1870s that the raiyati holdings came to be transferred in large numbers in land market. Moreover, as has already been shown, the origin of the gantidars did not have much to do with the " differentiation ", but more directly with rent farming and reclamation. Thus the above presumption seems to be difficult to maintain. We should rather think out a new con-cept of differentiation if we choose to adhere to the differentiation theory,61) or try to trace the origin of the privileged peasants and their dependents in the agrarian formation in the late Mughal or early colonial period.
Secondly, central Bengal does not fit in well with the typology of Bengal agrarian structure which Sugata Bose has recently put forward. Dividing
114 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
Bengal into three broad regions, that is, west and central Bengal, east Bengal and the frontier region of north and south Bengal, Bose has argued that the peasant small holding-demesne labour complex,62) the peasant smallholding system and the jotedar-share-cropper relationship prevailed in respective regions in the beginning of the twentieth century .63) As is evident from what we have discussed above, however, central Bengal was an area where the superior peasants who managed their large holdings on the korfa system were in control of the rural scene. This discrepancy has most probably resulted from Bose's basic standpoint: he tries to minimize the social and economic importance of the privileged peasantry like gan-tidars, haoladars and aymadars, with the single exception of the jotedars of north Bengal. But there is no denying the conspicuous fact that colonial Bengal was spotted with several areas where a thick layer of privileged peasants, if not as big as the jotedars of Rangpur, was in existence.64 Regional typology is no doubt an indispensable tool to make a meaningful analysis of the rich world of agrarian Bengal, but perhaps it has to be restructured by taking the various types of privileged peasants into con-sideration.
Notes
1) As to the recent state of debate, see Ray 1988.
2) See, for instance, AA. 2830-2 (W.J. Herschel), Report of the Indigo Commission Appointed under Act XI. of 1860, with the Minutes of Evidence Taken before them; and Appendix, P.P., 1861 (72-I) xliv, 335 (hereafter as RIC). As re-gards the problems concerning leadership, see also Kling 1966, ch. 4. However, Palit is of the view that the landlords were mainly responsible for the occurrence of the revolt (Palit 1975, p. 145).
3) Anonymous 1880, pp. 301-4.
4) The Report of the Rent Law Commission, with the Draft of a Bill to Consolidate
and Amend the Law of Landlord and Tenant within the Territories under the
Administration of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, 2 vols. (Calcutta, 1883) vol. 1, Report, paras. 14-17; Field 1883, pp. 705-706.
5) I have refrained from using the term " jotedar ", since there has developed no common understanding as to its content even after nearly two decades of debate.
6) M. Finucane on Special Duty to Board of Revenue, L.P., 21 Mar. 1883 in Momen 1925, p. clxxxii (hereafter as " Finucane Report "). Furthermore, the Glossary of RIC also says " Sometimes he [a gantidar] holds half or a
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal 115
whole village " (RIC, p. lxi). 7) Westland 1874, p. 149. 8) See Appendix below.
9) Report on the Condition of the Lower Classes of Population in Bengal (Cal-cutta, 1888) (no pagination; hereafter as RCLCP). A brief summary of this important survey will be found in Chaudhuri 1967, pp. 314-6 and A. Sen 1982, pp. 36-40. As to the circumstances under which this enquiry was undertaken, see Bhatia 1960.
10) Three bighas make one acre.
11) A. Smith, Commissioner, Presidency Division, to Govt. of Bengal, No. 1 M.A. 17 May 1888, paras. 80-81 (hereafter as " Smith Report ") in RCLCP. 12) Ibid.
13) R. Sen 1874, p. 8.
14) Smith Report, para. 42, in RCLCP. In another three villages the number of ploughs was counted on the assumption that the prosperity of a family was regulated by the number of ploughs it could afford to keep in work. In Vil-lage A there were 200 families in all, of which 44 were families of cultivators, 58 those of labourers by the definition adopted in this survey, and the rest those of artisans, beggars, etc. Out of these 44 cultivating families, 25 fami-lies were found to own one plough each, 8 famifami-lies two ploughs, 2 famifami-lies three ploughs, 3 families four ploughs, and 1 family as many as five ploughs. There was one cultivating family which did not have any plough. Village B had 226 families, of which 77 were actual cultivators. 63 families held one plough each, while 14 owned two ploughs each. In the Village C there were 133 families. 38 families were cultivators, 12 being labourers. 33 out of the 38 cultivating families had only one plough and were badly off. (Ibid., paras. 29, 35 and 39).
15) It was reported from most districts of Bengal in the early 1870s that a plough with a pair of oxen could cultivate about 15 bighas. Important exceptions to this were districts of Dacca, Jessore and Rangpur where it could cultivate only 10 bighas. According to the same report, a holding consisting of approxi-mately 30 bighas was considered to be " fair-sized " in half of the twenty-two districts of Bengal. (See the section entitled " Condition of the Cultivators " for each district in Hunter 1875-77). As to the Jessore District, Ramshunker Sen gives the same figure, i.e. 10 bighas, as the maximum limit which can be kept under cultivation with one plough. (R. Sen 1874, p. 8; pt. 2, p. 34). 16) RIC, pp. 32-3, 127-8.
17) RIC, pp. 46, 58-59, 129 and 263.
18) RIC, pp. 109-110, 127 and 244. Barasat now forms a subdivision of the 24- Parganas district.
116 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2
19) Papers relating to Indigo Cultivation in Bengal (Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal) P.P., 1861 (72) xliv, 1, pp. 89-90.
20) RIC, pp. 62-63.
21) The problems concerning the poorer peasants who had no ploughs are another matter. In fact, there were a great number of such peasants. For instance, Ramshunker Sen's survey revealed that the average number of ploughs per house amounted only to 0.495 in Jhenidah and 0.462 in Magurah in Jessore. (R. Sen 1874, pp. 59-60).
22) The case of Beni Madhub Mittra, who did not personally manage his lands, might be added to this category.
23) R. Sen 1874, p. 8. 24) Gastrell 1868, p. 7.
25) RIC, A. 3623 (Ashley Eden). There are innumerable references to date cul-tivation in RIC. For instance, see A. 2602 (J.H. Reily), A. 1561 (A. Grote), A. 1231 (Bhikhoo Mundal), A. 1356 (Junoo Mundal), A. 1380 (Fakir Mahom-ed), A. 1621 (Adu Jotedar), A. 2529 (Ram Churan Biswas), and A. 3212 (Zirabdi Karigur).
26) Westland 1874, p. 165.
27) Employment of casual agricultural labourers during the busy season is left out of consideration here. We only take up for discussion employment of labour power on a permanent basis.
Furthermore, in one of the Nadia villages the Dufferin Enquiry brought out an interesting correlation between the size of the family and that of the hold-ing: there existed a clear tendency that a bigger family held a larger holding. (Smith Report, para. 51 in RCLCP). It appears that the number of adult male members had much to do with the prosperity or poverty of a peasant house-hold in the nineteenth century agriculture. Another wayof saying this would be that younger brothers and relatives played a critical role as labour force in a peasant joint family.
28) Westland 1874, p. 149. Emphasis is mine.
29) RIC, p. lxii. Theoretically, maurushi merely means a " hereditary tenure ", while there is a specific term, mukarrari, to denote a tenure at a " rent or rate of rent fixed in perpetuity ". But both were reportedly used in a very loose way in Nadia. (Hunter 1875-77, vol. 2, p. 73).
30) R. Sen 1874, p. lv. 31) RIC, p. 151. 32) RIC, p. 203.
33) Hunter 1875-77, vol. 2, p. 47. 34) RIC, pp. 149, 207 and 206.
Superior Peasants of Central Bengal 117
land barga, or I should establish koljana [dependent] ryots to cultivate it ", because " I am an old man, and not able to work ". (A. 3226 [Buddun
Chowdari], RIC). Another case was a gantidar who had 20 to 25 dependent raiyats as well as bargadars. He had told the bargadars to cultivate rice.
(A. 3235 [Mir Ramzan Ali], RIC). In a third case a raiyat complained that the people of an indigo factory made his bargadars sow indigo. (A. 3260 [Srinath Bose]). We know from the last two cases that the landlord of cen-tral Bengal in this period could instruct the bargadar what crop to raise. 36) R. Sen 1874, p. xxxiv. See also p. 10.
37) Smith Report, para. 31 in RCLCP.
38) Furthermore, the custom of letting out land on the barga system was reported to be common in the bils [marsh] and Sunderbun tracts of the Khulna district. (Smith Report, para. 83 in RCLCP). This type of barga was bound up with the specific ecological circumstances under which agricultural production was extremely precarious.
39) Employment of the bargadars on the demesne of the zamindars and tenure-holders is out of the scope of this paper.
40) Smith Report, para. 50 in RCLCP. 41) Smith Report, para. 54 in RCLCP.
42) Smith Report, para. 57 in RCLCP. 20 cottahs make 1 bigha. 43) Smith Report, para. 58 in RCLCP.
44) Smith Report, para. 59 in RCLCP. Further, Sen reports on the servant system in Jessore as follows:
Some ryots, especially the better classes, who do not hold the plough them-selves, employ an agricultural servant for the season at Re. 1-4 per month, plus food at Re. 1-4 and clothing (two dhuties and one garncha) valued at
Re. 1-7 for the term. The season lasts from Chyet [March-April] to the end of Bhadra [August-September] . . . (R. Sen 1874, p. 10).
45) Hunter 1875-77, vol. 7, p. 272.
46) N.S. Alexander, Commissioner, Burdwan Division to Secy. to Govt. of Ben-gal, Rev. Deptt., para. 56 in RCLCP.
47) Chatterjee 1982, p. 148. Furthermore, Nadia had a peculiar tenure which was called utbandi. According to RIC, it was " an arrangement by which a ryot takes a certain amount of land and pays rent for whatever he brings under actual cultivation." (RIC, p. lxii). In this paper, however, the ut-bandi tenure has been excluded form the scope of discussion, mainly be-cause this arrangement seems to have primarily been made between the zamindar and the raiyat. For a detailed treatment of this interesting tenure, see Pringle 1928, ch. 3.
118 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies , No. 2 while that of settled raiyats added up to 811,111. (Momen 1925, p. 116). 49) Finucane Report, in Momen 1925, p. clxxxii.
50) Ibid.
51) R. Sen 1874, p. 91.
52) "Abstract of Returns to Board's Circular , No. 29, dated 17 September 1856, on the subject of the Number and Conditions of Under-Tenures in Bengal , etc.", in Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Colonization and Settle-ment in India, with Proceedings, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index , 1857-58, P.P. 1857-58 (461) Pt. II., p. 436.
53) Finucane Report, in Momen 1925, p. clxxxviii.
54) The gantidars of this village told Finucane that " it would be well if their korfa tenants' rates were fixed by public authority at 4 annas in the rupee over the rates paid by themselves ". (Finucane Report, in Momen 1925 , p. cxcii). Furthermore, it is also reported that the original zamindars of Mu-hammadshahi pargana had made settlement with gantidars allowing them about 25 to 50 per cent margin of profit. (Momen 1925, p. 118).
55) Finucane Report in Momen 1925, p. cxcii. 56) Westland 1874, pp. 76-77, 150.
57) Momen 1925, p. 114-5. 58) Chaudhuri 1982, p. 152.
59) The Bengal Tenancy Act, Sec. 5, Sub-sec. 5. 60) The Bengal Tenancy Act, Sec. 85.
61) B.B. Chaudhuri has already made a tentative attempt to formulate such a con-cept. See Chaudhuri 1967, pp. 317-8.
62) By this term Bose means the coexistence of the small peasants and the agricul-tural labourers who worked on the demesne of the zamindars and intermediate tenureholders. (Bose 1986, ch. 1).
63) Ibid.
64) In this respect, see also Ray 1988, pp. 240-3.
References
Anonymous, 1880: " The Bengal Peasant: Chapter II ", The Bengal Magazine, Vol. 8 (Mar. 1880).
Bhatia, B.M. 1960: "An Enquiry into the Conditions of the Agricultural Classes in India, 1888 ", Contributions to Indian Economic History, vol. 1 (1960).
Bose, Sugata 1986: Agrarian Bengal: Economy, Social Structure and Politics 1919-1947 (Cambridge, 1986; Indian reprint, 1987).
Chatterjee, Partha 1982: "Agrarian Structure in Pre-Partition Bengal ", in Three Studies on the Agrarian Structure in Bengal 1850-1947, Asok Sen et al. (Calcutta,
1982).
Chaudhuri, B.B. (Chowdhury, Benoy K.) 1967: "Agrarian Economy and Agrarian Relations in Bengal 1859-1885 " in The History of Bengal (1757-1900), ed. Na-rendra Krishna Sinha (Calcutta, 1967).
Chaudhuri, B.B. 1982: "Agrarian Relations: Eastern India " in The Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume 2, ed. Dharma Kumar (Cambridge, 1982; Indian reprint, 1984).
Field, C.D. 1883: Landholding, and the Relation of Landlord and Tenant, in Various Countries (Calcutta, 1883).
Gastrell, J.E. 1868: Geographical and Statistical Report of the District of Jessore, Furreedpore and Backergunge (Calcutta, 1868).
Hunter, W.W. 1875-77: A Statistical Account of Bengal, 20 vols. (London, 1875-77).
Kling, Blair B. 1966: The Blue Mutiny: The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal, 1859-1862 (Philadelphia, 1966).
Momen, M.A. 1925: Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Jessore 1920-1924 (Calcutta, 1925).
Palit, Chittabrata 1975: Tensions in Bengal Rural Society : Landlords, Planters and Colonial Rule 1830-1860 (Calcutta, 1975).
Pingle, J.M. & Kemm, A.H. 1928: Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Nadia 1918-1926 (Calcutta, 1928).
Ray, Rajat Kanta 1988: " The Retreat of the Jotedars ? ", The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 25-2 (1988).
Sen, Asok 1982: "Agrarian Structure and Tenancy Laws in Bengal 1850-1900 " in Three Studies on the Agrarian Structure in Bengal 1850-1947, Asok Sen et al. (Calcutta, 1982).
Sen, Ramshunker 1874: Report on the Agricultural Statistics of Jhenidah, Magurah, Bagirhat, and Sunderbuns, in the District of Jessore, 1872-73 (Calcutta, 1874). Westland, J. 1874: A Report on the District of Jessore: Its Antiquities, its History,
and its Commerce, 2nd ed. (Calcutta, 1874).
Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Colonization and Settlement in India, with Proceedings, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index, 58, P.P. 1857-58 (461) Pt. II.
Report of the Indigo Commission Appointed under Act XI. of 1860, with the Minutes of Evidence Taken before them; and Appendix, P.P., 1861 (72-I) xliv, 335 [RIC]. Papers relating to Indigo Cultivation in Bengal (Selections from the Records of the
Government of Bengal) P.P., 1861 (72) xliv, 1.
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128 Journal of the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies, No. 2 論文要 旨 19世 紀 後 半 の 中央 ベ ンガ ル に お け る上 層 農 の 土 地 経 営 に つ い て 中 里 成 章 植 民 地 支 配 期 のベ ン ガル 農 村 史 の研 究 にお い て は,近 年,エ リー ト農 民 論 と して の 「ジ ョ トダ ール 論 」,「農 民 層 分 解 論 」,｢地 帯 区分 論 」 な どが は な や か に論 じ られ て き た.し か し,そ う した 「理 論 」 は必 ず し も実 証研 究 に立脚 して い る と は言 い 難 く,論 争 が空 回 りす る徴 候 も見 え て きた よ う に思 わ れ る.本 稿 は,ベ ン ガル 中 央 部 の上 層 農 民 に着 目 して,彼 ら が どの よ うに して 土 地 経 営 を して い た のか,初 心 に返 り,出 来 る限 り具 体 例 に基 づ いて 解 明 しよ う とした 試 み で あ る.主 要史 料 と して は,1860年 の 「藍 委 員 会 報 告 」 が用 い られ る.委 員 会 にお け る70余 名 の農 民 の証 言 は,農 民 が 自分 自身 につ い て 自 ら語 っ た記 録 と して きわ めて 貴 重 な も ので あ る. こ こ で上 層 農民 とい うの は,特 権 的 な 条 件 で土 地 を 保 有 す る 農 民 層(ガ ンテ ィ ダ ー ル 等),村 落 首長 層(マ ンダ ル 等)お よび そ の他 の富 裕 な ライ オ ッ トの三 つ を含 めた 農 民 層 の こ とで あ る.彼 らの土 地 経 営 に は次 の よ うな特 徴 が 見 られ た. 上 層 農 民 は,通 常,土 地 を下 級 ライ オ ッ トに転 貸 してそ の大 保 有 地 を経 営 した.た だ し,下 級 ラ イ オ ッ トの耕 作 条 件 は か な り緩 や か な も ので あ り,北 ベ ン ガル の上 層 農 民 の 下 で ひ ろ く見 られ た刈 分 小 作 制 とは,は っ き り区別 され な けれ ば な らない. 保 有 地 全 体 を転 貸 す る者 は,ガ ン テ ィ ダ ール な ど の一 部 に限 られ てい た と考 え られ る.多 くの者 は,大 な り小 な り自留 地 を維 持 し,そ れ を耕 作 す るた め の犁 と耕 牛 を所 有 して い た.自 留 地 で恒 常 的 な労 働 力 と して用 い られ た の は,家 族 労 働 を 別 に す れ ば,「 サ ーバ ン ト」 等 と英 語 史 料 に現 れ る 常 雇 の農 業 労 働 者 で あ る.彼 ら は前 貸 金 を 借 り受 け,主 人 に従 属 して い た. 刈 分 小 作 制 が こ の時 代 に 中央 ベ ン ガル で 一 般 的 だ っ た とは考 え られ ない. 上 層 農 民 の間 か らは,積 極 的 な経 営 志 向 を示 す 者 が出 現 してい た.彼 らの な か に は, 金 貸 し,商 業,投 機 に と どま らず,伝 統 的 な精 糖 業 者 の間 に割 っ て入 る か た ちで,精 糖 所 の経 営 に乗 り出 す 者 も存 在 した. 以 上,大 局 的 に見 れ ば,19世 紀 後 半 の上 層 農 民 の間 に は,地 代 生 活 者 化 しよ う とす る傾 向 と,商 業 的 農 業 を追 求 し,農 村 工 業 に も手 を染 め よ う とす る傾 向 が併 存 して い た と捉 え る こ とが 出来 る.ベ ン ガル 借 地 法 等 の植 民 政 策 の性 格 も,こ の よ うな在 地 有 力 層 の動 向 との 関連 で評 価 され な けれ ば な らない で あ ろ う.
