ai-ELUSIVE VILLAGES:
» SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION
’ IN RURAL EAST PAKISTAN

“Thesis for 'the Degree of Ph. D. .

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

‘ PETER I. BERTGCCI .; ,7
’ ' 1970 '

 

 

WWW“WNW!

                                             

 
     
   

00098 7606 L

  

LIBRA R 1'
Michigan State
University

This is to ce‘flifg tfiflthe

 

thesis entitled

ELUSIVE VILLAGES:
Social Structure and Community Organization
in Rural East Pakistan

presented by

Peter J. Bertocci

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph ,D . degree in_An.Lh.m_leogy

<1; II. I... Iv .‘ ‘I\ ; «LN
a
Major professor

 

Date May 21, 1970

0-169

 

milks. .- .
f ; A
~ l, ‘.M.. a 5' $ ‘1

11.3

t &

{IN} N f) 2002.

 

 

 

 

F'"\.f
-L, it.“

P

 

,«l

ABSTRACT
ELUSIVE VILLAGES:

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION
IN RURAL EAST PAKISTAN

BY

Peter J. Bertocci

This thesis focusses on rural community organization and social struc-
ture in a part of Comilla District in East Pakistan. It combines the concept
and method of cultural ecology with certain social structural insights of
Marx and Weber.

The so—called villages of Eastern Bengal, characterized by exceedingly
dense populations and scattered patterns of settlement, are in no sense resi-
dential social systems of a holistic sort. Rather, they are engulfed in simul-
taneously operative levels of social organization in which direct links between
intra and extra village groupings serve to negate the social reality and inter-
nal cohesiveness of the "village" per se, These levels of organization - the
intra-village reyai and the extra-village samaj - involve much larger numbers
of people than those resident in a given village. They extend territorially to
include the immediate area surrounding individual villages and are as much a
part of the organization of group activities of rural residents as are individu-
al villages themselves. Moreover, the overlap of these entities located in
given market areas functions in such a way as to allow the assertion that, in
reality, the market area and its organizational subdivisions are the relevant
residential social system, rather than the village. Evidence from the workings
of kinship, economic, political and religious systems is presented to demonstrate

this finding. The dynamics of the social system thus described are analyzed

inv'.\uf’ '4

 

Peter J. Bertocci

with reference to the economic class, social Status and political power rela-
tionships which characterize it. These in turn are seen as grounded in the eco-
logical adaptation of a dense population to a deltaic environment in a monsoon

climate.

’/

fmv'.\flfl’ 54
'w—‘Ll- ._

I)

«v
I

.- —-- .—_.,.. m. .o

ELUSIVE VILLAGES:
SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION
IN RURAL EAST PAKISTAN

By

a
{1
.I

rI'l
Peter J; Bertocci

 

T.
A THESIS :"

Submitted to .
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

F

 

,7]

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

1970

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

'/

 

A completed Ph.D. thesis, representing as it does the culmination both
of intellectual effort and of the rites of passage leading to the threshold
of an academic career, inevitably suggest its author's host of very special I
debts. These are both personal and intellectual, reflecting myriad influences
on his training and develOpment. And also inevitably, only the most salient
of them can be recalled, even fewer named. As do all others in my present
position, I face an impossible task.

Surely, however, any attempt even to begin its accomplishment must in-
clude loving recognition of the role of my parents, Dr. Peter A and Mrs. Lucy
S. Bertocci. First and foremost must be cited their constant effort, from
my childhood onward, to inculcate in me a concern for and interest in peOple

and their lives. Herein lies the genesis of my ultimate interest in anthrOpol-

 

ogy, the most humanistic of the social sciences. Secondly, moreover, I must

note the fact that my parents have always considered travel an essential in-

gredient in their children's education and all my life they undertook special 1
sacrifices in order to ensure the inclusion of travel in my education upbring- if .._
ing. This thesis itself in a sense is the product of a train of events which ‘
\
\

began when, fresh out of college, I accompanied my parents to Calcutta in 1960-
61, for it was then that my interest in South Asian Studies and in Bengal was
kindled. This, in addition to several previous travel experiences, instilled
in me the wanderlust which is the hallmark of the anthropologist's soul.

Over and above these ongoing familial debts, those of friendship and learning

11

iii

especially in the final years of my educational career,would constitute a long
and complicated roster. To my fellow students in the class and study rooms of
Michigan State University, where particularly in the early years of graduate

study the interaction and mutual support was crucially helpful, I owe the im-

measurable debt of camaraderie which made my graduate career as enjoyable as it

'/

has been exciting.

The Department of Anthropology has happily combined for me in its faculty
both highly competent instruction and rewardingly informal personal relation-
ships. Dr. Joseph Spielberg, Dr. Seymour Parker and Dr. Barry M. Raulet, who
all have served on my Graduate Committee at various points, have taken a special
interest in my development and been exceedingly supportive and helpful. Dr.
John D. Donoghue, with whom my personal and professional contact has been very
close over extended periods of time, is the man who first made me feel - not
merely know - the relevance of anthropology to life experience and human prob-
lems. He was instrumental in providing the opportunities in which this could
be emotionally perceived. In him also I have seen an exceptionally imaginative
mind coupled with the drive to make ideas become reality. To him I owe my per-

sonal view of anthropology not merely as an academic discipline, but a way of

'R
life. Finally, it is to Dr. Ralph W. Nicholas that much of what underlies this
thesis intellectually is owed. Without question, his knowledge of and insight
into the social and cultural life of the Bengal delta have greatly informed '\
the essence of what is presented here and my hape is that these pages reflect F,
credit on him. Moreover, his knowledge not only of social anthropology and \-

South Asia, but also of other disciplines and cultures, have provided the most
admirable of professional models. Over and above these contributions, however,
I most appreciate Dr. Nicholas' treatment of me not merely as a student, but as
a friend, indeed a colleague. This, plus other efforts of a nonrintellectual

sort of my behalf, have contributed greatly to my sense of competence as a

F

Ilia.

if" ' "to" " "I

iv

professional and of being well launched on an academic career.

There also remains to acknowledge to the many individuals associated with
my experience in Pakistan my heartfelt thanks. Mr. Richard O. Niehoff, Assis-
tant Dean of International Programs, and Campus Coordinator of the Pakistan
Project, Michigan State University, was instrumental in facilitating my entree
to Comilla. While at Comilla, the faculty of the Pakistan Academy for Rural
Development and the staff of the Kotwali Thana Central Cooperative Association
were endlessly accomodating and friendly, so much so that in a real sense the
Academy and Abhoy Ashram became for me a real "home away from home." For all
this, Dr. Akhter Hameed Khan, the great rural reformer and former Director of
the Academy was ultimately responsible and to him my thanks must ever go.

Among the many at the Academy who became my friends, I must especially thank
the following. Janab Mohammedulla, of the Agricultural Cooperative Federation
of the K.T.C.C.A., was the first to take me "into the villages" and watching
him relate to ordinary and poor people, both urban and rural, was truly impres—
sive. Special thanks are due to Mr. M. Ameerul Huq, my co—worker in the field
during the early stages of my work, whose assistance was invaluable. I also
remembers Messrs. M. Anwarul Hoque, Moqbul Ahmed Chowdhury, Badaruddin Ahmed
and Abdul Wahab for many hours of pleasant, warm and informative conversation.
My appreciation is also felt toward Mr. M. Nurul Huq, Assistant Director for
Administration, and Mr. A.B.M. Nurul Huq, Librarian, both for administrative
assistance to me in my work as well as friendly interest in me. Finally, a
warm vote of thanks goes to Mr. Rafiqulla, that most genial of bankers (National
Bank of Pakistan, Kotbari Branch), for introducing me to one of the most moving
forms of East Bengali Islamic worship.

While at Camilla, I also enjoyed the company and sustenance of its tiny
"foreign community." In particular, the presence of Dr. Nicolaas G.M. Luykx,

then Ford Foundation-M.S.U. Representative, and Mrs. Luykx, was a constant

9’

source of pleasure. Dr. Luykx, with his keen interest in and knowledge of
rural development problems, was a perennial source of intellectual stimula-
tion as was Mrs. Luykx of gracious hospitality. Mr. and Mrs. D.0. Blackiston,
A.I.D., Camilla, Mr. and Mrs. Jens Riis and Mr. Paul Wienagsard of the Danish
government's technical assistance program at Comilia, were always the most
genial of hosts to the young anthropologist in search of "R and R," as were
also Dr. and Mrs. John Stoekel of the Population Council. Finally, to the
earstwhile and intrepid British Volunteers, Peter Felix, Barrie ward, Jim
Gardiner and David McHutchison, with whom I shared room and board when in
Camilla town, I owe many long hours of conviviality.

Throughout this whole endeavor, the support of the Asian Studies Center
has been unflagging. Dr. William T. Ross, its director, combines the concerns
of the scholar, the diplomacy of the enlightened administrator and an interest
in students, from all of which qualities 1 have been the reaper of great bene-
fit. It was he who first interested me in going to Camille and his constant
support, not only of me, but of all those associated with the Center in one
way or another, is greatly appreciated. A special and unexpected boon has
been the willingness of the Center to arrange for the typing and reproduction
of this thesis, as well as the perseverence and painstaking effort of Mrs.
June Sterrett in performing the task.

But in the end this thesis owes itself to the many Bengali villagers
whose patience, curiousity, talkativeness and simple human kindness made it
possible. How quickly the stranger in their midst became a stranger no more!
To them, then, this thesis is dedicated. No words of mine put to page in
this connection could serve their purpose better than these I adapt from
Myron Wiener, who, in The Politics of'Soaroity, most aptly expresses the feel-
ings of pro-Bengali foreign scholar. Like him, "I cannot close without some

special word of affection for the Bengalis whom I interviewed" and behind

’/

.'\ A#'~.

'M/

vi

whose mud walls I shared food. Unjustifiably despised by certain of their
countrymen as backward, unreasonable and weak, ethnocentrically maligned by
all too many foreigners who pass through East Pakistan, the people of East
Bengal do indeed “"remain for the garrulous scholar a sheer delight" and the

partially Latinized one finds in them a well-spring of emotional affinity.

9’

Rochester, Michigan, May 1970

N

N'W/ "

TO THE VILLAGERS OF OOMILLA THANA

In societies where agricultural
activities remain predominant, and
where the process of industrializa-
tion has only begun, the social probé
lems associated with modernisation
concern in the first instance the
peasantry. It is the rural villager
who, in addition to being wrapped
in the fabric of tradition, is also
the first victim of technological
inadequacies as well as the inegali-
terian social relations which charac-
terize the old order.

(translated from Georges Balandier,
Le contexts Sacio-culturel at 29
Coat social an progres.)

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Social Structure and Community Organization . . . . . . . 1
Part I: The Bengali Village Betwixt and Between . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter I: The Village Republic as a Non-Entity . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Chapter II: The Ecology of Village Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chapter III: The Process of Village Development ,. . . . . . . . . . . 35
Chapter IV: Economic Adaptations to the Deltaic Environment . . . . . 56

Chapter V: Social Stratification in Hajipur and Tinpara:
Caste or Class? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Chapter VI: The Villages and their Extensions - I . . . . . . . . . . 104
Chapter VII: The Villages and their Extensions - II . . . . . . . . . 131
Part 11:, Social Structure and Social Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Chapter VIII: Fusions and Fission in the Politics
Of the sarWi system 0 O O O O O O O 0 O O O O O O O 147

Chapter IX: Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143.
Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .\. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Appendix I: Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Appendix II: Family Types and Land Ownership Types . . . . . . . . . . . 208

viii

LIST OF MAPS

Map 1: Market Area and Constituent Samaj Mauzas . . . . ... . . . . . . 24a
Map II: Bengal: Ecological Zones . . . . . . . . . . .,. . . . . . . . 34
Map III: Village Haj 1pur O O 0 O O 0 O O O I 0 O I. O O O 0 I O O O O O 0 37a

Map IV : Village Tinpara O O O 0 O O 0 I O O O O O O 0 O O O O O I O O O 398

ix

Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 3:

Table 4

Table 5:
Table 6:
Table 7:
Table 8:
Table 9:
Table 10

Table 11

Growth of Population Densities by District and Thana

LIST OF TABLES

Origins of Families Prior to Current Place of Settlement . .

Farm Size in Hajipur and Tinpara . . . . . .

Cultivators Classed by Land Ownership and Economic Behavior .

The Increase in Report of Shaikh in Bengal,

Class and Status in Hajipur and Tinpara I . .

Class and Status in Hajipur and Tinpara II

Land Location of Hajipur Villagers . . . . .

Land Location of Tinpara Villagers . . . . .

Hajipur and Tinpara:

Location of Marital Ties of Hajipur and Tinpara

Appendix II, Table 1:

Appendix

II, Table 2:

0

from 1871

Household Types and Composition

Hajipur and Tinpara: Household and Land

Ownership Types . . . . . . . .

to 1901'

Household and Land Ownership Types Compared . .

31
48
66
71
76
90
90
105
105
114

121

209

. 215

INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION

The anthropological study of South Asian society has undergone a re-
markable florescence in the past 25 years. Just as the discipline has
turned its attention to the study of complex societies, the older focus
on India's tribal populations gave way in the post-War years to a ple-
thora of studies which took as their concern the social and cultural or-
ganization of South Asian peasant communities. In addition to develop-
ing a considerable literature on rural society from various regions of
the Sub-continent, anthropologists have begun to work in urban areas as
well. Yet despite the seeming embarrassment of riches bestowed upon us
by two and one half decades of anthropological study in South Asia, the
fact remains that our wealthy literature in this regard contains no
systematic study of an East Pakistani community. Here, indeed, our em-
barrassment is one of poverty.

I regard this as something of an historical irony, for one of the
first post-War articles in the American Anthropologist on South Asian
peasantry (Smith 1946) described aspects of life in rural Sylhet Dis-
trict of what is now East Pakistan. Smith's study contained the results
of a kind of "culture-at-a-distance" effort, the product of depth in-
terviews with a single Bengali Muslim informant during a course in
field methods at Columbia University. Yet since that time, the subse-
quent proliferation of South Asian ethnographic studies has not, to my
knowledge, brought in its train a full-fledged field study of any East
Bengali village, although some empirical research reports of varying

l

lengths and quality are available.1 In general, anthropological liter-
ature on South Asia retains a sizeable lacuna with respect to East
Pakistan.

One of the purposes of the present study, then, must be to begin
to close this gap in knowledge. Stating this, I merely express a strong-
ly felt obligation to perform something of the traditional ethnographer's
task and my effort in these pages will be to provide, to the extent
of its relevance to a more specific set of problems, a reasonable modi-
cum of culturally descriptive detail.

Beyond that, however, the present work has no pretension to eth-
nography, especially if, by my so designating it, the reader were led
to expect "an overall view of the culture of the people about whom it
is written" (Berreman 1968: 337). Of course, "everyone who does empir-
ical research in cultural or social anthropology engages in ethnography

' as Berreman (ibid.), in a recent review of the ethnograph-

as a process,‘
ic method, reminds us. And so, to the extent that this study has depen-
ded for its data on the traditional anthropological method of direct
observation of both verbal and non-verbal human behavior, my efforts can
be described as "ethnographic" in the usual sense. "In practice,"
Berreman (ibid.) goes on to state, an ethnography "covers those aspects
which the ethnographer considers relevant to an understanding of the
culture he studied." With respect to this study, Berreman's admission
should serve as a caveat to the reader who delights in ethnographic de-
tail. For in it I am most directly concerned with those aspects of
Muslim Bengali society and culture which I have found to be relevant in
understanding community organization in one part of rural East Pakistan.
Appropriately, then, I consider my attempt in these pages best charac-

terized as a "community study,’ with which term our sociologist

colleagues have usually labelled their own "ethnographic" efforts.

The major aim of this study, then, is to analyze the relationship
between community organization and social structure in one thana2 - a
politico-administrative unit roughly analoguous to an American county
- in East Pakistan. I shall be concerned with the process by which
class, status and power regulate the workings and the interdigitation
of territorially and functionally overlapping social groups. Before
proceeding, I should make explicit my perspective and assumptions.

By community organization, I refer simply to the complex of groups,
associations and institutions related to kinship, economics, politics,
and religion which both organizationally and normatively shape inter-
action between members of a residential population. Now, it is obvious
that the question as to what constitutes "a community" is theoretically
open-ended. That is, an institutional analysis of the sort I imply
here can proceed, depending on the aims of the researcher, from the
small localized grouping to encompass a region, many regions, a province,
the nation-state and, indeed, "the world." From the point of view of
the researcher, the definition of "the community" is, in the end, ar-
bitrary; he must choose what kind of community, and what aspects of
that community, he wishes to study. From the point of view of the res-
ident, the community is that complex of groups and institutions with
and in which he daily interacts. Thus, for a Bengali peasant, certain
activities are associated with his "village" or gram, and others with
his family of procreation (poribar), patrilineage (gusthi), and bilat-
erally extended kin ties (atiyo), all of which may or may not be cater-
minous with his "village." Certain activities are further associated
with his mosque (masjid), if he is a Muslim, whose congregation may or

may not be coterminous with his "village." Political activity may take

place for him within the confines of both intra-village and extra-
village groupings, whose nature I shall discuss in some detail. Eco-
nomic activities are also varied situationally, depending on whether
the villager is tilling land in his own, or another "village," or
whether he is buting or selling in a nearby or far away market or town,
and where, to or from whom, he has borrowed or lend land, money or rice.

As the researcher in.this instance, I have taken as my task the
definition of an East Bengali community, determined at least initially
by the activities of my informants and their ideas about those acti—
vities. For reasons I shall explain, I had no choice but to proceed
in this manner, for the isolation of what is called a "village" is im-
possible from a mere scanning of the deltaic terrain. Furthermore,
there are problems in assuming too much about the term gram (village),
which term in English all too often has implied a composite residential
social system, the like of which has no reality in East Bengal as such.
The term.gram is a "native category" of importance, whose meaning must
be determined with precision, from observation and interviews. The
focus of my research was on two socially defined "villages" or grams,

a total population of nearly 600, but through discovery and analysis of
the extent and nature of the inhabitants' kinship, political, economic
and religious activities, I was soon led to perceive that their "camp
munities" extended territorially and interactionally well beyond the
reaches of their most immediate group referent, the gram.

To this extent, then, my approach to community definition is inter-
actional. I have been somewhat arbitrary in limiting my community's
"boundaries" to what I call, following Skinner (1964), its "market
area." I do not think, however, that my arbitrariness in this respect

is total, for most of the daily interaction of the people I knew and

II
I

and observed for 11 months can be said to have centered within the con-I
fines of their "market area."

But my approach to the study of this community has also been situ-
ational. That is, I came ultimately to focus on what kinds of situa-
tions were related to what kinds of activities and events and the man-
ner in which these aided in defining the community and manifesting its
workings. I am mainly concerned with showing the way in which social I
structure - more specifically class and power relations - situates the
activities whose ordered and institutionalized performance gives real-
ity to, and articulates between, groups of people and thus the "commun-
ity" they comprise.

My orientation in this study toward the analysis of social struc-
ture will be seen as essentially Marxian. This will be apparent from
my chosen emphasis on the otherwise obvious fact that every society has
a "material" foundation and the relevance that foundation has for under-
standing social relations and political power in a human community. I
should stress, however, the limited sense in which I mean to apply this
general (and well-known) theoretical framework. In my view, a society's
"material basis" merely sets the conditions under which, in differing
historical and cultural contexts, the opportunities for both choice
and action for some individuals and groups are qualitatively and quan-
titatively constrained, while those of others are enhanced (see the dis-
cussion of this point in Lefebvre 1969: 1-24). In complex societies
like the one to be discussed here, it seems clear that the overall re-
lationship of groups and individuals to "modes of production" tends to
correlate with the differential allocation of social status and politi-
cal power. But it is also clear that a superordinate-subordinate dis-

parity between "the powerful" and "the powerless" does not always ’

obtain absolutely with respect to specific events. For such complex
societies are also characterized by a varyingly intricate prolifera-
tion of roles and statuses, each differentially and not always neces-
sarily, connected to subsistence activities per as. This fact results
in the existence of a wide "middle spectrum" of personnel whose acti-
vities regularly and importantly attentuate the extremes of power dis-
tribution (except under those conditions of intra-societal stress which
create a polarization along power lines). Moreover, I recognize that
the working out of power relations in a society is subtly acted upon
by factors of personality, cultural norms and values. Finally, I see
the ensemble of these structural relationships as constantly subject
to varying degrees of change.

In this study I shall attempt to demonstrate a postulated rela-
tionship between the elaboration of social structure - class and power
relations - and ecologically adaptive modes of subsistence. It will
be evident that my effort is informed by the concept, and guided by
the method, of cultural ecology. I want to show the ways in which
social and political relations are grounded in 1) the relationship be-
tween an environmental setting and the productive technology used to V
subsist within it and 2) the group arrangements which develop from the
exploitation of that given environment with that particular technologi—
cal assemblage (following Steward 1955: 39-42). Put differently, my
_argument here will be that social structure in the East Bengali vil-
lages I describe has been historically elaborated in the context of /
interaction between a population of a certain size and density, its
productive technology, and a monsoon climate in a deltaic terrain. Let

me emphasize at the outset the emphatic 'possibilism" in my view. The

relationship between population, technology and environment is seen

here as a constraining, not a determining, influence on the stru

of social life in the Bengal Delta. This will, 1 hope, be evide

the extent to which I relate what I know of the are's history to sue
present-day scene, showing that under given ecological conditions, and
in part because of certain historical events and processes, the
Bengali peasant villages I discuss are structurally ordered and ter-
ritorially extended in certain ways.

My study is divided into 2 parts. Part I consists of an essen-
tially "static" descriptive analysis of formal community organization,
its ecological underpinnings, historical determinants, and its social
structural bases. Where possible and relevant, both quantitative and
qualitative data will be fully presented. With respect to the latter,
I shall make frequent use of case material. In this "static" part of
the study, however, the "cases" will be presented largely for illus-
trative purposes, to buttress general statements made on the basis of
interview, observational and quantitative data. This use of case ma-
terial, similar to that of Bailey (1960), compared to its use in Part
II, is more exemplary in intent than analytical. It will in part
serve also as a means of presenting ethnographic data. I prefer thus
to designate these "cases" sequentially as "Example 1, Example 2," and
so forth. Also in Part I, I shall present data pertaining to economic
matters in the form of "hypothetical illustrations," set apart from
the main body of the text. These also will be numbered sequentially.

After discussing formal organization and its structural bases in
Part I, I proceed in Part II to a more "dynamic" analysis of "how the
system really works." This section of the study will contain a more
detailed description of actual events against the backdrop of the analy-

sis given in Part I. In it I shall utilize for analytical purposes

cases of the "extended" variety, in something of the manner prOposed by
Gluckman (1961), although the material presented will vary in depth.
Moreover, the cases in Part II will have the narrative continuity, with
overlapping casts of characters, reminiscent of Turner's (1957) "social
dramas," and, similarly, will be analyzed and related to final conclu-
sions. In schism and continuity in an African society, however, Turner
was concerned with making a statement about political processes per as,
which aim is not that of the present work. Because my goal here is
more limited, I shall not attempt to apply Turner's "processional form"
- "breach, crisis, redressive action and re-integration or recognition
of the schism" (Turner 1957: 9lff) - which is central to the concept of
"social drama" as he has conceived it. Thus, because I have adopted
the form, but not the complete substance, of the "social drama" method
of case elucidation and analysis, I shall not presume to use the same
term. In Part II, case material will be sequentially labelled "Case
Study 1, Part A, Part B," and so forth, each part followed by analysis.
Thus, by the use of "case studies" in chronological and narrative se-
quence, I shall try to show the link between structure and process. In
the examples and case studies, as everywhere in the text, references to

persons and places are pseudonymous.

Part I

THE BENGALI VILLAGE BETWIXT AND BETWEEN

Ei Ek gas, 61 Ek gas -
madhye dhu dhu math,
dhan kfiuner likhan likhi
karche nitui path.

Jasimuddin in Naksi Kathar Math

A village here, a village there
by broad field liked as one;
their soils must ever learn anew
to measure paddy's sum.

(Field of the Embroidered Quilt)

97‘

 

ne-‘\ 4". _

l'l

CHAPTER I

THE VILLAGE REPUBLIC AS NON-ENTITY

Students of rural South Asia long ago abandoned the "village re-
public" view of Indian society which for many decades pervaded the
writing of British officialdom on the Sub-continent (see Cohn 1968 for
a history of the "village view" of Indian society). Since the begin-
nings of systematic enquiry into the workings of South Asian peasant
communities, the conception of the village as a sociological isolate
has come to be considerably modified (see, e.g., Opler 1956) and it is
more or less axiomatically accepted that South Asian rural communities
form "part of a wider (social) system" (Srinivas and Shah 1960; see
also Cohn and Marriott 1968). At the risk, then, of seeming to beat
the proverbial dead horse, I think itsuseful to introduce a discussion
of Bengali village organization by pointing out a perhaps less well
known fact. It is interesting to note that, despite the prevalence of
the "village republic" notion throughout the 19th Century, British ad-
ministrators familiar with Bengal often in their writings referred to
the inappropriateness of the nation at least with respect to the south-

ern districts of the province. In his report on Tippera (now Comilla)

 

 

fl

District in East Bengal, Hunter (1876: 384-5) asserted: "Village come
munities, in the sense in which the words may be applied in certain
parts of India, do not now exist in Tipperah; ..." Beveridge (1876:
216-17) describes the Bakerganj countryside as follows:
"The houses are . . . scattered, and there is little of collec-
tive village life. Each house stands by itself on its mound,
surrounded by a thicket of fruit trees, and there is often no

other house in sight or nearer than 100 yards."

10

11

Both of these statements refer to the even then heavily populated active
delta districts of Bengal, demonstrating the existence of conditions
nearly 100 years ago to which recent statements still attest. For ex-
ample, Nicholas (1963) states that "active delta villages are ordinarily
quite dispersed, linear or chain-link in layout with houses quite dis-
tant from one another."

It appears, then, in contradistinction to the organizational pat-
terns found typically, for example, in North India and the Deccan, with
their seemingly insular, well-nucleated villages, there emerges a quite
different pattern of settlement in Bengal and other densely populated
deltaic regions of South Asia. Indeed, the predominantly Muslim vil-
lages of East Pakistan's southern districts, at least, are, as Geertz
(1959: 991) has shown for rural Bali,

"in no sense ... corporate territorial unit(s) coordinating

all aspects of life in terms of residence and land ownership,

as peasant communities have commonly been described, but

(they are) rather a compound of social structures, each based

on a different principle of social affiliation ..."

The village area I shall discuss lies some 4 miles away from the
town of Camilla, itself 60 miles southeast of Dacca, the provincial

3 107 square

capital. Camilla Kotwali Thana, an administrative unit
miles in area, of which the villages form a part, is located well to

the east of the great river systems which have moulded and shaped the
topography of East Bengal, and thus the area does not fully share the
riverine ecology of the districts to the west. Nonetheless, many of

its environmental features are decidedly similar. I shall later attempt
to show some of the limitations imposed by environment and technology
on the choices a peasant cultivator must make in the location of home-

steads is not as random as it appears to the eye of the casual observer.

But the pattern of settlement effected by purely ecological

12

considerations is, at the outset, socially random, in the sense that
the arrangements of dwellings does not correspond to some externally
derived cultural ideal (as in the case of Mesoamerican villages, for
example). Large scale nucleation of settlements does not take place;
scattered homesteads, somtimes bunched together in clusters, is rather

the rule.

Mauza, Villaggfand the Problem of Definition

Population is dense and homesteads are unevenly spaced; human hab-
itation is concentrated, yet its pattern dispersed. The village as a
discrete and observable physical entity is seemingly invisible. More—
over, its discernment is complicated at the outset by the fact that
such lists of "local"villages" as exist are based on several definitions
of the term "village" (as I discovered in consulting the listing of the
Pakistan Academy'for Rural Development compiled in 1963).

4 This term

The most common definition of village is as a "mauza."
refers to the minimal unit in the system of land revenue collection es-
tablished by the Mughals and continued by the British, who also made it
the "village" of the decennial Census of India. Throughout the area's
recent history, particularly in the 18th and 19th Centuries, mauzas
were simply arbitrary agglomerations of land delineated by men primarily
interested in carving up the countryside into taxable units, without
respect for natural social groupings. Cumming (1899: 78ff), who direc-
ted the last complete settlement survey of the village area under dis-
cussion, refers to the long-standing practice of lumping villages into
survey units, noting that "many so-called villages are merely bits of

land dignified with that name because they are so noted on Collectorate

lists, in accordance to which the survey has necessarily been carried

13

on" (p. 78). Over time it seems to have become the practice to treat
mauzas as "villages" for practical administrative purposes and that
practice continues today. Some 200 mauzas exist in Camilla Kotwali
Thana today and, "dignified" with distinctive names (of the sort to
which I have referred), they serve as one kind of socio-territorial re-
ferent for both administrators and villagers. But mauzas often do not
correspond to "natural" social groupings which are called villages in ,/
a sociologically significant sense.

The second type of village referent which complicates the list-
ings is the gram. 1 should point out that the Bengali word gram is the
most widely used term for "village"; it is the closest in meaning to
its English equivalent but has the widest latitude of applications,
meaning, for example, both "local village" and means when used impre—
cisely. Here I use it solely to refer to socially recognized ("local")
villages, the kinds of social groupings which are the subject of this
thesis. As regards their listing on offical documents, attempts have
been made by administrators to recognize the fact that where clusters
of dwellings have come to be seen as social units by local people, ir-
respective of mauza location, they have been given names. Thus they
have been included on different kinds of lists, usually, but not always
fully, at the Union Council level. Some 460 "local villages" are repor-
ted to comprise Camilla Katwali Thana.

The third referent for the village combines the first 2, thereby
compounding the potential for confusion, at least from the point of
view of the researcher attempting to make sociological sense out of
various village lists. The census village represents another arbitrar-
ily grouped aggregation for the purposes of enumeration during the cen-

sus operations in 1951 and 1961. Census villages include both mauzas

14

and local villages, in so doing bringing one even further from the ac-
tual social situation. Moreover, due to administrative discrepancy or
oversight, the Union Council lists may not tally with those available
at the Thana Council level. There are nearly 250 census villages in
Camilla Kotwali Thana.

It would appear, then, that a seemingly nefarious combination of
ecology and bureaucracy succeeds at the outset in thwarting the efforts
of the social researcher to find the elusive Camilla village. When
beginning his research, the anthropologist must be somewhat arbitrary,
depending on his purposes, in seeking a community in which to carry on
his investigations. Only after preliminary conversations with local
inhabitants can he decide where most fruitfully to begin his inquiry
and he must patiently embark upon the time-consuming procedure of tak-
ing his own census without full knowledge of the "boundaries" of the
group he is studying. But such tentative beginnings are not without
their reward. For as he goes about his business, the anthropologist
gradually comes to focus, at least approximately, an the social proces-
sea which for the villagers themselves bring order out of demographic
chaos. And in the end, the anthropologist may learn well the lesson of
which the Bengal delta is the teacher par excellence: that in social
life there are no boundaries save those of the specific situation, and j

they are never permanently fixed.

Hajipur and Tinpara: ContrastinggModes of Village Organization
The villages I describe are examples of complexity I have outlined
above. One of them, Village Hajipur, corresponds largely to a mauza
in terms of its boundaries as a socially recognized village, although

in some social contexts certain nearby homesteads outside the mauza

15

boundaries fit into its collective village activities. In the mauaa
officially known as Hajipur, there are 10 homesteads, lying in nucea-
tions set off from those of other mausaa, containing a population of
322 (in 1967). This agglomeration is referred to as both Village and
Mauza Hajipur, although the nearby homesteads to the east, west, and
south of the actual mausa are often included in it for most social pur-
poses.

Some 250 yards to the south of Hajipur there is another, more
tightly unified, homestead cluster. This consists of 13 homesteads
which line 2 village roads, one going north-south, the other east-west.
These 13 homesteads fall variously into 3 mausas: 5 in the eastern
and (pans: lit. "neighborhood" or "ward") of one manna; 5 in the south-
ern para of a second mauha; and 3 homesteads house all of a third small
mausa's inhabitants. The total papulation of this homestead cluster
was 245 at the time of research. Despite their location in 3 different
mausas, these homesteads constitute what for their inhabitants is a soc-
ially recognized village (gram), as their emphatic statements to that
effect when questioned made abundantly clear. Thus, although these vil-
lagers belong to 3 "official" villages, with different names, their uni-
ty as a socially defined village is undisputed. I refer to this other-
wise unnamed community as "Tinpara," (Three Neighborhoods), a name of
my own concoction introduced for clarity of reference.

The 2 villages provide examples of the contrasting ways in which
the "official" village - the.mausa - often differs from the social real-
ity of the gram. The homestead clusters which are their physical ex-
pression reflect the dwelling agglomerations which occur in seemingly
haphazard fashion as a result of the constraints imposed by climate and

topography. Given the relative proximity of member homesteads, it seems

l6

reasonable to suppose that over time the interaction this facilitated
contributed to a certain sense of unity in these little groupings,
leading to the eventual feeling that their members respectively were
united - to which groupings the term gram or "village" was naturally
applied. As I shall attempt to point out, there are a number of ways
in which patterns of group behavior and simple custom tend to buttress
this feeling of "village" solidarity. But I also hasten to stress that
no aspect of social organization functions solely in support of village
solidarity per se. Rather the character of kinship, economic, politi-
cal and religious ties are as much extensive, linking people to extra-
village groupings, as they are intensive, lending internal cohesion via

specifically village-oriented activities.

The Reyai

Hajipur and Tinpara differ internally in another significant way.
Neither of the communities has any formal centralization of authority
at the "village" level; that is, there is no single headman in either
case. Rather there are within each village several recognized leaders
of "influentials" known as sardars who are members of (sardari) lineages
which usually excede their neighbors in land ownership and homestead
population. Thus, both Hajipur and Tinpara may be seen as composed of
homestead clusters which, while reflecting geographical proximity of
residential groups, also represent constellations of families among
which certain lineages preponderate in wealth and social influence.
The sardars, members of dominant lineages, have formally recognized,
although not always necessarily obeyed, authority over the homesteads
comprising their respective groups. As there is no centralization of

village authority, local affairs are when necessary formally regulated

17

on a kind of ad hoc basis by the sardars when, for example, a conflict
must be settled, or some other similar situation. Thus, social and
political power has in the first instance highly localized bases, al-
though power extends beyond the immediate locale, as I shall try to
show.

The formalized unity among member homesteads in such groups is,
reflected in the term by which they are known, reyai, a word of appar-
ent Arabic origin meaning "proteges; those who are under the domain of
others."5 The relationship of the reyai to village organization varies,
however, as the cases of Hajipur and Tinpara will show, for above the
level of the homestead-based residential kin group it can - but does
not always - represent the next step in the territorial expansion of
rural social groupings.

Village Hajipur, for example, has 3 regais, in each of which there
is one sardari lineage, the largeSt in terms of land holding in each r
respective grouping. Village Tinpara - composed as it is of parts of
3 mauzas - has only 1 reyai in which there are 2 sardari lineages. That
is, while Hajipur is internally divided into 3 sub-village groupings,
the homesteads comprising Tinpara have group unity, to which the terms
rayai and gram are simultaneously applied. Thus, in Tinpara there is
no intervening level of organization between the homestead and the vil-
lage; the homestead cluster and the village make up a solidary unit,
known both as a reyai and a village with no distinction between the
two. One informant, responding to my initial confusion on this point,
stated: "It is both our reyai and our village" (amadar reyai 5 hay,
gram 5 hay). In both villages, the sardars are those to whom first re-
course may be had in matters of social control, and they may seek to

exercise their authority in this regard individually or jointly, in

18

consort with sardhrs from other villages.

In Hajipur, whose reyais I enumerate here for purposes of clarity
(although they are not so enumerated by the villagers), Reyai I is
composed of 5 homesteads with a total population of 183 (56.18 percent
of the village's total) and aggregate land holding of 57.08 acres (56
percent of Hajipur villagers' reported total). In addition, Rayai I
counts among its members 2 homesteads from a neighboring mauza to the
west, a fact which demonstrates the inexplicitness of mauza and even
village boundaries as far as social organization is concerned. Hajipur's
Reyai II consists of 2 homesteads only, with a total of 68 in popula-
tion (21.1 percent of total village population) and an aggregate land
holding of 20.65 acres (21 percent of Hajipur's total). Reyai III con-
sists of 3 homesteads, its total population being 71 (22.1 percent of
village total) and aggregate land holding 22.95 acres (23 percent of the
village total).

In all 3 reyai groupings the sardari position of leadership is ac-
corded to what I have called the "dominant" lineage. Thus, in Rsyai I
the sardari lineage claims control nearly 35 acres of land (34.59 per-
cent of Hajipur's total) and counts within its fold over 50 members.

In Reyai II the sardari lineage claims nearly 20 acres of land (19.20
percent of Hajipur's total) and also over 50 members. The structure of
this reyai reflects little more than that of the sardari lineage itself
however, in that the sole other member homestead of this group is that
of an impoverished family whose male members have nearly all married
out and live uxorilocally - an anomalous situation. Finally, Reyai III,
in the northern end of Hajipur, contains a sardhri lineage whose land
holdings is about 13 acres (13 percent of Hajipur's total) and has over

25 members. Thus, Hajipur's unity as a village is countered internally

19

by the segmentation of 3 sub-village groupings, each headed by the 3
families whose land ownership totals are highest in the village as a
whole. In Hajipur, however, most of the collective activities which
involve the village as a whole take place under the leadership of the
sardari lineage in Reyai I, whose predominance in numbers and land own-
ership is evident. It sponsors collective religious Observances and
had furnished the principle impetus for other village activities, in-
cluding the formation of a village cooperative society. In its fold
is counted one of the principle village money lenders who alone claims
control of more than 10 acres of land. But though this lineage is
dominant, it is not completely so, for the other 2 sardari lineages
possess enough status and influence to counteract it in certain situa-
tions.

In Tinpara the situation is less complex. There is one reyai and
it corresponds to the village itself, as I have pointed out. While
there are 2 sardars, dominance is clear in the hands of one, who singly
owns more than 12 percent of Tinpara villagers' total aggregated land
holdings. He has been (by reputation) a money lender in the past and
even now the less affluent among Tinpara villagers rely on him for rice
loans during the lean seasons and occasional employment on his farm.
Here also, collective activities center around his homestead - religi-
ous gatherings, evening recreation and the like. By contrast, the sec-
ond sardari lineage is far more numerous, its members individually less
wealthy, and the group as a whole appears not to figure highly in vil-

lage affairs.

The Samaj
The 3 rayais of Village Hajipur and the single rsyai which con-

stitutes Tinpara each forms part of a multi-reyai grouping known locally

20

as samaj, a word whose generic meaning is "society," but which is also
translatable in various specific contexts as "association" (3 function-
ally specific "society"). The sardhrs of the various rsyais which come
prise the samaj are members of a kind of "Council of Elders" whose jur-
isdiction in local affairs extends over an area much wider than that of
the reyais in which each individual sardar holds sway. The reyais of
Hajipur and Tinpara are part of a samaj grouping which extends over 8
mauzas, a total area of perhaps 1.2 square miles with a total population
of about 1,800. The key territorial feature of this ensemble is the
contiguity of the mauza-based reyai enclaves involved. That is, the
samaj is composed of a number of territorially contiguous reyais and
covers the better part of 8 mauzas, the sardars each representing their
respective reyai groupings. As suggested, the samaj functions as a
kind of "Council of Elders" but one whose activities are primarily re-
lated to the settlement of disputes and little else. Its manifest
function is largely one of social control; but, as I shall discuss in
more detail, its latent function is to channel political relations be-
tween the prestigious sardars and the groups they represent when those
relations are thrown into open conflict. But the samaj is not an ad-
ministrative body, nor does it meet regularly; it is not recognized by
the Government of Pakistan as a body of local government, although on
some occasions its members are consulted, their cooperation requested,
when formal governmental bodies, such as the Union Council, or govern-
ment officials deem their services useful for certain purposes. As I
shall later show, it is an institution evolved by local villagers as a
means of collectively handling matters of import to the residents of a
multi-village area, under historical conditions in which little exter-

nal authority was present to perform such functions. It is composed

21

of men who either are, or whose fathers presumably were, among the most
influential in the area, althoug the samaj is not necessarily the sole

institution where the impact of such men can be felt.

Aggyai, Village and Samal; 3 levels of organization

By way of summary to this point, I suggest that rural social organ-
ization in the area I am discussing can be seen both structurally and
processually as involving the following stages of steps. Its minimal
unit is the homestead-based patrilineage which in turn builds into what
I have called homestead clusters, constellations of lineages grouped
around the most powerful, wealthy or otherwise influential (sardhri)
lineages. At this first stage, the group formed is known as the reyai,
its formal leadership vested in the sardars. Where both geographical
and interactional variables suffice to encompass the bulk of individ-
uals' collective activities at this level, such an entity is also des-
cribed as a village (gram); where conversely both geography and collec-
tive interaction link the reyai homestead cluster with other like enti-
ties, the agglomeration of these units becomes the relevant village
and thus becomes a second or intervening stage in the elaboration of
social organization over a wider area. The final stage in both struc-
ture and process is the linkage of the individual reyais to the samaj
grouping, whose functions and composition have been described.

Three things ought to be noted from the brief description offered
here. Firstly, the territorial and organizational extensiveness of the
samaj as an institution stands in marked contrast to the smaller geo-
graphic and organizational scale of the reyai, based on the clustering
of a few homesteads. Thus, social structure takes institutional shape

in the form of complementary intensive-extensive opposition of parts

22

and processes. Secondly, with respect to political relations, especial-
ly as regards the resolution of conflict, the village (gram), where it
consists (as in Hajipur) of several rayais, is afforded no formal recog-
nition. From an institutional point of view, the relevant formal organ-
ization of conflict resolution for the "villager" is the reyai and its
linkage to the samaj via the participation of the sardfirs in it. The
village, where it exists as a multi-reyai entity, does not fit into the
formal organization of politics. Thirdly, then, the village cannot be
seen, as peasant villages elsewhere have often been described, as a
territorially-bounded residential social system. Rather it is at best
an intervening level of social organization in an institutional con-
stellation which is geographically expansive and demographically inclu-
sive in character, in which both formal and informal groups are flexibly
relevant - or not relevant - to the individual depending on situational

context e

The market area

Yet the complexity of territorial organization does not stop with
the samaj. Hajipur, Tinpara, and the samaj grouping of which they form
a part, lie to the north of a small market place, which I call Alirbazar
("Ali's Market"). Alirbazar is an effective "central place" for some
15 to 20 mauzas which surround it. It is the locus of a small local
village market (hat) which meets twice weekly. On market days, most of
the sellers and buyers come from the villages and mauzas near Alirbazar,
none more than 2 to 3 miles distant, all in the same Union. The market-
place contains a total of 10 assorted tea and betel shops and other
small commercial establishments which deal in fruits, vegetables, pulses

adn spices, as well as manufactured consumers' items from the town.

23

These establishments operate on a daily basis and all are owned by local
people.

The market place is also the locus of a primary school for village
children and before that school's construction there was a madrasa
(Islamic school) in its place. The seat of the Union Council for the
whole area is also there. At one end of the market place there is a
cement platform on which evening prayers (maghribi namfij) are performed
on market days; moreover, an occasional are or mahfil is held in the
marketplace, which large numbers of people from the thana at large at-
tend. Finally, the market place is a center for sports and recreation;
in the summer months, for example, volley ball games are often organ-
ized by the more athletically inclined younger men. In the evenings
the tea shape remain open until well after dark, two of them particu-

' where card games are a regular and highly

larly to the "small haurs,’
convivial attraction.

In short, this market place is both geographically and socially
central at its surrounding mauzas and their various "village" or reyai
enclaves. The people in these mauzas are generally known to each other,
are united to a great extent by kinship ties (as I shall demonstrate
later) and interact both privately and publically in innumerable kinds
of activities. The Bamaj I have described is complemented by similar
groupings to the south and west of the marketplace. In this locational
context, then, the market place may be seen as the center of a socia-
logical circle (see Map I), whose interactional radii extend through
overlapping and complex organizational forms. Much as Skinner (1965: 3)
has shown for rural China, the market area to which I allude here may

be seen to "help shape local social organization and provide one of

the crucial modes for integrating myriad peasant communities into (a)

24

single social system ...," which encompasses all of the units and sub-
units I have cursorily described. In comparative context, then, one
might usefully think of the whale bazar area as the minimally relevant
social arena for the Bengali peasants who inhabit it. Indeed, a com?
plete discussion of the patterns of social organization in this part

of rural East Bengal must ultimately take such a unit as a focus.

24a

«Haaaoo ..n.m.<.m as hmoposoo
dood>one mos Hoaoawmo AodeHadeo pmopoav wmmfi no woman man nopoxm

.moaao>o ouoz

.meono pagans pcaoenoo
was man MESS? .Ho
omens opoHUoEEa Hmaocaw
mapdoaosa mono ooHoHao

33338 Seas“:
omens Haas u

damaoae
use sandman
no oodpeooa
opeaaxoammm u a e m

     

 
  

Umfiddpm
mousse ”mean u m a
o h o n sad:
1... 5 pox as u C mbm'mdsweelaufaoe o
o e
modhoesdon ” a. e .‘

   

 

muses apesaMOHmao u nulnl

UGOH “

OHHE H II... ..H “010m

mill III; sea»

on

z

menses ndaem psafipdpwsoo one eon¢ waxed:

H mm:

CHAPTER II

THE ECOLOGY OF VILLAGE STRUCTURE

East Pakistan may be roughly divided into two main phy-

sical divisions: (l) the vast alluvial plain and (2) the

marginal hills in the east and south-east.

But this simplicity of form has two peculiar features.

The plain is watered by one of the most remarkable networks

of rivers in the world, while on the surface of the plain

itself there are certain well marked topographical features

formed by older alluvial deposits which rise several feet

above the dead flatness of the plain and not only serve

to break the scenic monotony, but also play a positive role

in the agrarian economy of the area. (Nafis Ahmed 1968: 11)

This summary statement by an outstanding Pakistani geographer
serves as a good introduction to the basic topographical features of
predominantly rural East Pakistan. The province is the product of
3 major river systems, those of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna-
Surma Rivers. The Ganges is Himalaya-derived, the Brahmaputra drains
the Tibetan Plateau, and the Meghna-Surma siphons off water from the
Sub-continent's eastern fringes in Bengal, Assam and the Northeast
Frontier, the highest rainfall area in the world. These 3 great river
systems have done much to mould and shape the character of the plains
through and over which they have flowed, creating, as they have under-
gone shifts and changes over centuries, both regionally and histori-
cally varied conditions for human settlement and sustenance. The re-
maining 2 systems, stemming from a plethora of hill streams in the ex-
treme north and southeast of the province, have by contrast made lesser
contributions to topography.

It is thus possible roughly to divide the vast plain which is East

Bengal into 5 discrete topographical regions, according to variations

26

of contour and minor physiographic differences (Nafis Ahmed 1968: 20-31).
While it is not central to my purpose to recapitulate this physical
geographical detail, I think it nonetheless crucial to point out the ba-
sic distinctions in deltaic environment which do exist. For these have
important ecological consequences, despite the otherwise monotonously
similar topography, hydraulics and physiography of the Bengal plain.

As the major rivers, particularly the Ganges, have shifted their
courses in an easterly direction over the past millenium, 3 types of
deltaic environment have resulted in characterizing the modern scene
(see Map II). In the north, the oldest part of the delta became mori-
bund, its shifting rivers having silted up their stream beds and the
area, becoming more elevated and dry, no longer benefits from yearly
silt deposites and has thus declined in soil fertility. Next in chron-
logical sequence was the formation of a mature delta in the central
districts of the province, where flooding and silting is still a regu-
lar feature. Finally, the south and southeastern districts fall within
the most recent and continuing formation, that of an active delta, sub-
ject to long periods of flooding and silting, graced annually by rich
deposits of silt which make it the most fertile part of the province
for agricultural activities (see Nicholas: 1963).

Since the agricultural potential of each deltaic area decreases rel-
ative to the time of formation, soil fertility increasing as one measures
from northwest to southeast, the ability of the land to support.large
rural cultivating populations accordingly affects their density. Thus,
for example, Dinajpur District in the extreme northwest has a rural pop-
ulation density of 750 per square mile with an average single owner
farm measuring 3 acres in size. Conversely, Camilla District in the

southeast, much of which falls in the active delta area, has a rural

27

population density of over 2,000 per square mile, with the average size
of single owner farms amounting to only 1.7 acreas.6 These kinds of
density differentials are also related to patterns of rural settlement,
for in the moribund delta area of the northwest nucleated villages are
commonly found. By contrast the flooding active deltaic environment,
with its far greater papulation densities, virtually precludes the pos-
sibility of nucleation in settlement patterns. Nicholas (1963) has
suggested that much of the population in the active delta is owed his-
torically to the migration of people who were cultivators by occupation
and caste, the pioneer inhabitants of a kind of "frontier" society, in
which elaborate social stratification was not a basic feature - a point
to which I shall return in another context.

The topography of Camilla Kotwali Thana is typical of the flat
loWblying plains comprising nearly all of East Bengal. Its fertile
soils are naturally watered (other than by rainfall) by a solitary hill
stream, the Gumti, which rises in the Tripura Hills whose flanks form
the eastern boundary of the thana and district. Buy physiographically
the area has been characterized as a flood plain (Nafis Ahmed 1968: 27-31)
and while the thana area is well removed from the current channels of
the Meghna River, its soils are nonetheless considered to be alluvial
in origin, known technically as (Old) Brahmaputra alluvium (M.A. Islam
and W. Islam 1956: 2-3). The results of a soil survey (M. Amirul Islam
n.d.) identified the geographic association of 2 soil series, Chakla
and Bharella, with the Camilla Kotwali Thana area, ranging from dark,
heavy clays to grey-brown silty clay loam or silty clay. The topography
of the series is gently undulating, with imperfect drainage, which re-
sults in flooding (from rains) in which standing water ranging in depth

from 1 to 4 feet over 3 to 5 months of the year. Broad native categories

28

assigned to the soils by peasant cultivators fit this technical descrip-
tion, for they generally refer to ataliya or ataZ soils, a heavy,
sticky clay; to baliya or bale soils as mixtures of clay and sand; and
to another sandy-clay mixture known as do—as. These soils are described
as highly suitable for the cultivation of at least two rice crops per
year and, indeed, under conditions which permit even a limited amoung
of irrigation, the pattern of two crops per year obtains.

Thus, the topography of Camilla Kotwali Thana is characterized by
a lowblying plain, the fertility of whose soil makes it a prime area
for wet-rice agriculture. But despite the general levelness of the
plain as a whole, the water-absorbent soil exhibits subtle rises and
depressions which, while individually microscopic when the total expanse
of the plain is considered, must seriously be taken into account by
peasant cultivators not only when planting their crops, but also, and
importantly, when locating their homes. These seemingly gentle undu-
lations of the land assume a large importance to the total scheme of
things because of the potential heaviness of the monsoon rains, coming
sometimes regularly, sometimes sporadically, throughout nearly 6 to 7
months of the year. The Camilla thana area reportedly totals over 94
inches of rainfall per year, monthly averages ranging from around .30
inches in December and January to 18 inches and over in the height of
the monsoon during June through August (see and compare District Cen-
sus Report Camilla 1961: 11-1, Table l and Nafis Ahmed 1968: 58, 1
Table II). Such rains combine with the amazing capacity of the soil to
respond to water, quickly turning solid dry grey clods into a soupy
morasse of mud which maintains its liquidity for days at a time. Thus,
an excess of rain in short periods of time can produce flood conditions

in which standing undrained rain water causes destruction to crops by

29

inhibiting the continued growth of rice stalks.

Under such conditions, the Bengali peasant cannot plant his crops
or build his home either randomly or according to a preconceived pat-
tern of location. Rather he must take into detailed account the lay of
the lands in his possession when planning such activities. Not only,
however, do these tapographical and climatic factors influence the
choices made by peasants in determining where to build homes. The
"state of the arts" of building and construction, as well as of plough
agriculture, further limit the kinds of adaptive response possible to
a marshy soil complex in a monsoon climate. Homes must be built of
mud scooped laboriously from nearby plots of land, or else of bamboo
lathe (bata) if the builder is a relatively poor man. Rooves are most
usually of varying qualities of thatch, unless one can afford a "tin"
(corrogated iron) one, the latter increasingly seen these days, but
as yet on only the homes of the more affluent peasants. Thus, the
limitations of a pre-industrial technology must be considered in
tracing what Nicholas (1963: 4) has called the "intervening steps" be-
tween environment and social structure, seen here in the develOpment
of settlement patterns. The result of these conditioning factors is
a pattern of settlement which is in effect socially random, in which
scattered, sometimes clustered, groupings of homesteads are produced.

But to note the random, scattered pattern of rural settlement is
to understand only part of the ecology of village structure. What
must further be kept in mind is the extreme density of rural population,
particularly in the thana under discussion.

East Pakistan has a papulation density which staggers the demo-
grapher's imagination, estimates usually given at over 900 persons per

square mile for the province as a whole. But such overall mean

3O

calculations for the province obscure the fact of rural densities well
over 1,500 persons per square mile obtaining in the most papulous dis-
tricts. It is not surprising, given differences in the returns to
agricultural effort in the different areas of the delta described
earlier, that population densities per district vary quite markedly

as one compares the moribund, mature, and active delta areas, as in
Table 1.

While for both 1872 and 1961 the units compared are not exactly
the same, and despite the fact there is no completely uniform corre-
lation between delta area and population density, the data in Table
I serve at least to indicate a direct relationship between the two.
There is a general tendency for the districts in the active delta areas
to have increased by close to or more than 3 times the estimates for
1872, while, with the exception of Mymensingh (through part of which
passes the Brahmaputra River), the districts in the moribund and less
immediate deltaic areas have merely doubled in density. While 1871-
1872 marks the first period for which any adequate population statis-
tics are available in the entire Sub-continent, there is reason to sue-
pect that the trends in Table l are reflective of a historical demo-
graphic process of much greater duration than that of a mere century.

While the precise origins and character of settlement in the Bengal
delta are as yet shrouded in mystery (and may well remain so), what
little has been gleaned from early history suggests the beginning and
later elaboration of civilization in East Bengal as having their locus
along the confluence of the great river systems (Morrison 1969). With
growth in population size and concommitant social complexity, coupled
with the.shifting of the great rivers over the last millenium, it has

been hypothesized that the eastern and southern parts of Bengal were

31

TABLE 1

GROWTH OF POPULATION DENSITIES BY DISTRICT AND DELTA AREA

 

 

District Delta Area* Population Population
Density Density 1961**
1872+ (rural)
Aper sq, mile of cult. area.

Chittagong A; out++ 452 3,300

Camilla A 562 2,040

Dacca Ma; A 657 1,900

Noakhali A 511 1,800

Faridpur Ms; A 658 1,525

Barisal A 540 1,350

Pabna A 722 1,320

Mymensingh M++ 377 1,300

Bogra Mi+ 472 1,250

Rangpur M++ 619 1,185

Khulna Ai+ 221 1,065

Jessore Ma 496 940

Rajshahi M 542 900

Sylhet out 316 875

Kushtia Ma 535 860

Dinajpur M 362 750

Hill Tracts out++ 14 1,300

Total a 17 districts

*A: active delta M: moribund delta

Ma: mature delta out: non-deltaic area

** Adapted from Haroun Er Rashid (1968: 356, Table XCVI)

+ Adapted from Nafis Ahmed (1968: 301); these figures represent only
overall papulatian densities, presented here for broad comparative
purposes only. Read population per sq. mile.

-H-

The relatively high figures (1961) for Mymensingh, Bogra, and
Rangpur Districts, despite their locations in the moribund delta
area, may be explained by the fact that all three are prime jute
growing areas. Mymensingh and Rangpur have consistently ranked
first and second respectively with respect to total area under jute
cultivation, Bogra, eighth (Nafis Ahmed 1968: 142, Table XI). The
comparatively low density for Khulna in the active delta is ex-
plained by the location in that district of the uninhabitable and
uncultivable Sunderban forest area; Haroun Er Rashid notes this,
further stating that excluding the Sunderbans, the density in

this district per cultivated area is ca. 2,000. His figure for
Chittagong seems inordinately high, but here he has subtracted un-
cultivable areas. Similarly, the figure for the (Chittagong) Hill
Tracts is high for the same reason; usual densities for this
largely tribal inhabited district are given as ca. 75 per square
mile.

 
 
 

32

gradually papulated, first via migration, then by natural increase, as
the eastward thrust of the rivers opened up new areas to the possibility
of settled cultivation (Nicholas 1962: 16-31). These demographic
shifts were apparently not without pattern. As Inden (1967) has sug—
gested, they are at least partly associated with the rise of Hindu
chiefdoms whose rulers at first resisted, then were subdued by and fin-
ally integrated into, Mughal expansion and rule from the 13th Century
onward. Thus, trends evident in demographic estimates given in Table

1 would seem to reflect only the most recent manifestation of a long
term historical process. The recent growth, of course, was accelerated
to a high degree along with the overwhelming increase in population all
over the Sub-continent associated with the "Pax Brittanica."

As is evident in Table l, Camilla District has one of the highest
population densities in the province. It is not surprising that there
should be heavy concentrations of people on the western side of the
district, bordered as it is by the Meghna River. But while Camilla
Kotwali Thana, lying some 30 miles away from that great waterway, does
not benefit from its annually fresh silt deposits, the thana nonetheless
has one of the highest rural concentrations of papulation in the entire
district. This fact is eloquent testimony to immense population pres-
sure, the hallmark of human existence in this part of the world. Esti-
mates cited by Webster (1910: 23) show that at the turn of the century
the overall population density of the present-day thana and its surroun-
ding area was 986 persons per square mile; current calculations yield
rural population densities of between 1,500 and 1,700 (or, as suggested
in Table 1, over 2,000 if persons per square mile of cultivated area are
taken into account).

This extreme density of population, then, is the second key

33

ecological factor related to village structure in Tinpara and Hajipur.
Indeed, much of East Pakistan, not to speak of Camilla District alone,

"7 with respect to population agglomr

presents a veritable "conruration
erates and patterns of settlement. The coined term is rather appropri-
ate when one considers the combined effect of population and settle-
ment patterns. Outside of Camilla town and off the few paved roads
which cut through the countryside one is still never far from peOple
and the physical manifestations of their presence. There is acre up-
on acre of rice land, dotted profusely with tree clusters, each betray-
ing the presence of a homestead. Indeed, trees are the only visual
relief on the otherwise featureless plain, save for an occasional
mosque, the conical silhouette of a Hindu cremation ground shrine, or
seemingly misplaced electric power pylons. The numerous trees perhaps
account for the many place names in Camilla thana having the suffix
"toli", as for example in villages named Shawaratali ("at the foot of
the shawara tree"), Gabtoli ("at the foot of the custard apple tree"),
Beltoli ("at the foot of the wood apple tree"), or Amtoli ("at the foot
of the mango tree"). Here, as elsewhere in Bengal, place names elo-
quently bespeak the ecology of a given religion.8 Merely to describe
this landscape, however, would be to belie the ubiquitous presence of
people. To travel down a village road is to enounter a never-ending
chain of homesteads, between groups and clusters of which there seems
to be no distinguishable boundary, their inhabitants ever-present, in
or near their homes, or at work in the seed-beds and fields, especially

during the monsoons.

 
 
 
 
    
   
   
      
 
       
 
  
    
 
 
 

WU DELTA ‘. I 0‘-v-g""'
l a) JALPAIGURI ' _ 3

..." a? N‘Ah {—3
j 1‘; “\n—“C‘ coocuxmj
;\~lA'lL.'\'c' DELTA _ :j": Mp3} BEHAR '

. 2”".- ' \ .
3"” I “\ g.“
ACTIVE DELTA": 5 “ST \

 

s ° \ \ I:
-. DINAJPUR » '

-..L-\'.\ \ RANGPUR
".3 ‘\ \ GARO HmLs

'..-\ .\.\ \\ >—

\“N’L‘ WEST \r
lDlNAJPUR(
‘ ’J/ W 30

O
§)L

 

I MALDA

3 I H A R . v ....
,1?" f ‘Ifil’e—hct‘smar _ .. I V K“- ‘ 3‘. El...
' ( a _ r??? f__:.;.: 7 » , - .

TRIPURA r\ 4']

.\ .....‘i. i») \

     

 

 

 

BOUNDARIES SCALE ,‘
Li’.‘~‘1‘.!‘.‘ll§“"~...§w5 was; MAP II .9 .'-° 3° 90:0 15° ;

BENGAL 1
WEST BENGAL ond HST P.'A::'..STAN L

Courtesy of . 10

p ..R W. “cm,“ ‘ Mop illustrating principal ecolag'n» gates

CHAPTER III

THE PROCESS OF VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT

Despite the visually amorphous character of the countryside, as
one acquires familiarity with the layout of homesteads in a small
area, it becomes possible to discern clusters of homesteads which are
closer to each other than other such groupings. With experience, the
observer can perceive rural settlements as the inhabitants themselves
perceive them. There is a continuous series of homestead clusters,
individual homesteads being of varying sizes and composition, joined
together by relative proximity and the relative density of social
relations that such proximity facilitates. What I call here the "home-
stead cluster," refers to a socio-territorial unit separated from
other like entities not only by physical space but also by the fact
that, for individual members, the prime focus of social relations is
within that grouping. And, as I have briefly mentioned above, home-
stead clusters are in turn the basis for the formation of social recog-
nized villages. Moreover, as I have suggested, the villages and paras
to which the particular constellations of homesteads give rise may, or
may not, correspond to mauzas.

As I have earlier noted, both Hajipur and Tinpara are examples of
this pattern. They lie about 3 miles south of Camilla town as the
crow flies, but it is 4 or 5 miles to the town along one of several
choices of unpaved (kacha) village roads which eventually branch into
a major paved (pukka) thoroughfare. The villages form part of Islampur

Union, along whose northern border there stretches another road which

1";

36

inclines imperceptibly westward from the town, toward the Lalmai Hills.
These (so-called) hills are in fact the remnants of a dissected, later-
itic old alluvial deposit which reaches elevations of 70 feet above
mean sea level. These red hillocks seem a veritable Himalaya rising
sharply from the gently undulating plain, but the gradual incline lead-
ing toward them is unobtrusively measured by the effort with which a
rickshaw puller labors his vehicle in their direction (see Map l).

The westernmost end of the village area encompassing both Hajipur
and Tinpara is marked by the rise of the Lalmai Hills. From the
southern end of this village grouping the beginnings of the hills are
clearly visible. Since the gradual incline of the plain toward them
is not immediately perceived, the low land's rice fields appear in
rude and abrupt contrast to the hills. Naturally, these fields are
continually subject to flooding from the drainage of which they bear
the brunt, a sad spectacle I witnessed twice during my stay in the
area. There is settlement in and around the hills, but where the un-
evenness of the plain results in depressions several acres in breadth,
only rice fields abound. Where roads and paths, of necessity constant-
ly banked, weave their way through the paddy-embellished fields, or
where the natural lay of the land permits, homesteads have been con-
structed, arranged often in line fashion, bounded by lowblying rice
land. This marshy area is the "hinterland" of Alirbazar, through which
"central place" village roads pass in both north-south and east-west
directions, along which two "line villages" adjacent to the bazar are
located. Otherwise, the low lands susceptible to flood allow no set-
tlement nor are they favored as cultivation lands for the same reason.

But the area to the north and west of the bazar toward the Lalmai

Hills is measurably higher. On these lands settlement is perceptibly

37 -

more scattered and haphazard. Homesteads here do not present them-
selves in the relatively ordered "line" fashion and there seems to be
little patterning in their spatial distribution. The land around

them is more valuable, because of its relative height, which makes it
amenable to settlement and less vulnerable to flooding when cultivated.

On this favored ground Villages Hajipur and Tinpara are located,
their homesteads dispersed in settlement pattern, thus contrasting
with the "line" villages to the south of the bazar. Hajipur and Tin-
para, as socially defined, lie in 4 different mauzas; the total area
of both villages, however, amounts to less than half a square mile.

It would seem surprising that in so small an area two distinct villages
could exist as internally distinct social entities, but this is the
case according to the local definition that has emerged from patterns
of social interaction.

The mauza which, with its 10 homesteads, constitutes the core of
Village (gram) Hajipur is 112.52 acres, or a little less than a fifth
of a square mile, in area. 3 of these homesteads are bunched close
together in the mauza's northern para, 4 others knotted around the
road some distance to the south of them. Another homestead is located
in a spot further removed from those mentioned and the last 2 are situ-
ated in the southwest end of the mauza, facing each other across a
large tank (see Map 3). Thus, the core of Village Hajipur consists of
2 definable homestead clusters and 3 more isolated individual home-
steads.

But the social reality of Hajipur is not constrained by the mauza
boundaries which otherwise confine these 10 homesteads to a particular
admdnistrative unit. For the interaction patterns which reflect

Hajipur's status as a gram extend to 8 other homesteads lying in 3

 

 

  
          

 

asammwm . an o mmmfi hmehsm
. . moose o "oonzo .w .280 opdhonooaaoo :5 $928 ow >0.» one s
dopofioomwd hi... smsosawwfimumo some owwamwm .mooopwoeon peaches @5396 meme nopoxm fl
emopmoso: H Xi.“
omopmosoe ~\\\ .
..oaooa L l ,
8321mm u nub ..lll 1..) l Ii .
11““qu . ~ .
hamoesop .ll).
snows u ..i.. a
u
use.” n illil .
enemas u B © © ..
.. .
econ u% i i .
.
.
zoomsdsH muse: ..
W a"...
u . 1:31..
..r ® ..
II Hanandm owed: «1
. Hogans“
.r. - . nausea
- flooded: Ali .1
. ...“...

......§

\\
l
e
Ameaoaev M
.. Mada H n wa .ade
e

e
a
Hsnanem 09335 ~

 

.-
’.

38

mauzas contiguous to that of Hajipur. To the east lies Mauza Imamgaon,
5 of whose homesteads in its northern para are linked to Hajipur vil-
lagers in daily patterns of interaction and regularized collective
activities. Directly south of Hajipur lies Mauza Radhapur, one of
whose homesteads is similarly oriented to Hajipur, as are 2 homesteads
in eastward-lying Mauza Gazipur.

Thus the boundaries of Hajipur as a village (gram) are difficult
to identify with any sense of permanence. The various members of the
total complex I have described are bound up with Hajipur in differing
ways, although the "core" of the village as a social unit seems to
consist of the 10 homesteads lying within the mauza itself. The aver—
age distance between these 10 homesteads is about 350 yards, although
the distance between the 2 homesteads furthest apart, from one end of
the mauza to the other, is nearly double that distance. If one adds
to this "core" of homesteads those of the contiguous mauzas, the over-
all average distance between homesteads in Hajipur as a gram is lowered
to about 330 yards, but the distance between the 2 homesteads furthest
apart is over 900 yards. Nonetheless, one of the factors which ap-
pears to contribute to the social unity of these dispersed individu-
al units is the fact that each of them is either within Hajipur mauza
or located more closely to Mauza Hajipur's homesteads than to any
other such cluster. To the north and northeast Mauzas Hajipur and
Imamgaon are bounded by a canal (khaZ) which separates them from an-
other mauza. The homesteads in Mauza Imamgaon's eastern para are
closer to those of Hajipur than to those in Imamgaon's own southern
para and there are many acres between the settled part of Mauza Haji-
pur and the mauzas on its west. The lone homestead in Mauza Radhapur's

northern end is nearer to Hajipur's homesteads than any other in

39

Radhapur.

To the 322 people of Mauza Hajipur the other homesteads add a fur-
ther 150 members. Most of these families are Muslim, but 3 Hindu
families are also present. One of these is a family of jugi weavers,
‘who give their surname as Debonath, by which title they also prefer
to be called as a caste.9 Another is a family of 'b‘ugi Brahmans"
whose members claim to have served the weavers as priests, although
none do so now. The third family is one of napits (barbers), which
caste is usually refered to in Camilla by the surname, ail.

To the south of Hajipur, and lying in mauzas continguous to it,
are Tinpara's l3 homesteads among which similar kinds of unity obtain,
but with interesting and important differences (see Map 4). Five of
these homesteads are situated along a road which forms the eastern bor-
der of Mauza Radhapur. Three of them lie on the other side of that
road in a small mauza named Rampur. The remaining 4 are in the south-
ern para of Mauza Imamgaon. The total population is 245; 2 of these
families are Hindu, representing the dhopa (washerman) and chutar
(or sutradar; carpenter) castes. To the north of this complex is a
solitary homestead of Jugi weavers (or debonath), a family which seems
to participate little in the activities of either Hajipur or Tinpara.

The 11 Muslim homesteads are formally united as a reyai grouping,
with 2 sardari lineages. But in this case, as noted above, the members
of this reyai grouping refer to themselves as a village (gram) as well,
and to the extent that the two Hindu families participate in certain
collective activities they are included in the "village," although not
all of them participate in the same measure. The carpenter family
seems most highly integrated into all, save religious, activities of

their Muslim neighbors, but the lower caste washerman family, relatively

its
Map IV

Village Tinpara

S

 
  
  
  

Scale: 16" = 1 mile

Mauza Imamgaon

Mauza Radhapur 'i (:) ‘f:)

a
5;: ‘ (fields)

(fields)

Mauza Rampur

’49an

(fields)

~A

M,“

co-“

~0-Ie-O».~

 

road

H

(fields)

...... == mauza
boundarfi

; €§§§ = pond

...... ‘ = Tinpar:
home-
stead

 

 

 

 

Sketoh map, showing current homesteads, adapted from official
mauza map provided courtesy of Dt. Collectorate, Camilla.
Source: Settlement Survey 1899

4O

impoverished, seemed to be socially more isolated. Thus, certain

paras of 2 mauzas combine with the homesteads in a third small one to
make up a discrete socially recognized gram, bounded at this level of
organization by the definition of the villagers themselves. The mean
distance between homesteads constituting Tinpara is about 170 yards, re-
flecting a much more closely knit spatial arrangement than that of Haji-
pur. Tinpara is to some extent geographically distinct from Hajipur

and even more so from other village complexes (the row of homesteads
comprising Tinpara's westerly flank are 300 to 400 yards removed from
it). Thus locational factors contribute to the social solidarity felt
by Tinpara villagers; by contrast Hajipur is so much more dispersed loca-
tionally that a similar sense of village solidarity seems more difficult
to achieve. A further factor which perhaps influences communication in
in Tinpara is that of the road along which most of its homesteads are
situated; in Hajipur the westernmost homesteads are well removed from
the main clusters along the road, these homesteads also not easily
reached via the paddy field embankments, especially during wet weather
(see maps).

I have emphasized here the locational factor in village definition,
although, as I shall point out, other elements combine with it to give
a certain solidarity to these little communities. But the importance
of location in influencing the social groups with which individual meme
bers of these communities primarily interact is reflected in 2 ways.
Firstly, it may be seen in the sets of neighbors the members of an in-
dividual homestead most easily choose in forming groups. Secondly, the
"principle" of geographic location I have said is operative here may be
illustrated by the problems of "finding a group in which to belong" ex—

perienced by members of homesteads whose location is ambiguous via a vis

41

2 or more sets of neighbors who are more felicitously clustered into a
"natural" unit. An example of the second instance demonstrates "the

exception which proves the rule."

Example 1

Cultivator Ahab Ali lives in a homestead located in Mauza
Radhapur, lying about 110 yards from the nearest neighbor,
his cousin, Shah Alam. To the north lies the next nearest
homestead, in Mauza Reshompur, about 165 yards away. Ahab
Ali Bari is surrounded by his seed beds and rice fields,
further hidden by a thick undergrowth of uncultivated woods
and bush.

Ahab Ali and Shah Alam are callaterals, in that Ahab Ali's
grandmother and Shah Alam's grandfather were brother and
sister. Ahab Ali's grandmother married and went to live
virilocally, as is the post-marital residence rule. When
her husband died she returned to her natal homestead,
bringing her son, Ahab Ali's father. The woman had sur-
rendered her claims to the inheritance of land to her bra-
thers at the time of marriage and thus her children were
not entitled to inherit from their matrilateral kinsmen.
Despite this disadvantageous situation, the woman and later
her son managed to purchase some land, to which her grand-
son, Ahab Ali, ultimately moved to live neolocally.

Shah Alam Bari is one of 5 homesteads which comprise a
reyai which lies to the south of Tinpara in several other
mauzas. As noted, Mauza and Village Reshompur lie to the
north of Ahab Ali Bari, the latter sufficiently distant
from both groupings to enable Ahab Ali to choose between
the two as the focus of his family's basic group affilia-
tion.

Ahab Ali, in fact, belonged first to one, then to the other
of these 2 groups. When he originally moved to his current
homestead location, he appears to have vacillated, initially
belonging to the reyai of his kinsmen, those of Shah Alam
Bari, then switching his allegiance to the Reshompur reyai.
Around 1960 he aligned himself with the Reshompur people,
remaining in their fold for 4 years.

in 1965, Ahab Ali's eldest daughter was married; her wed-
ding was an event which put the father into an embarrasing
situation. Ahab Ali wanted to invite both his kinsmen and
his reyai peers to the wedding, but the custom at weddings
is to invite only the members of one's own reyai. When his
intention to do both became clear, Ahab Ali incurred the
anger of Master Saheb, the sardar of the Reshompur rayai,
who confronted Ahab Ali with the fact of his deviance from
custom in inviting both groups. Master Saheb made it clear
that he would not allow his own and his reyai's "honor"

42

(izzat) to be impugned in this manner and thus he formally

expelled Ahab Ali from the Reshompur group. In effect, Ahab

Ali was told to go and join with his kinsmen once and for

all. The principle of exclusivity in reyai membership seems

reflected in the Master Saheb's words: "dhanno dike gate pare

n&" (no man can go in both directions at the same time).

This example illustrates the way in which homestead location in-
fluences reyai and village membership, although in any given situation
involves other complexities. In Example 1, Ahab Ali is torn between
his kinship connections and those with non-kinsmen in another reyai
grouping (matrilateral kin ties take on a great importance in this other-
wise ideologically patrilineal society, in ways I shall specify below).
His problem seems to have been brought about precisely by the ambiguous
location of his lonely homestead, nearly equidistant from two clustered
groupings. Surely, had his home been located nearer to that of his
relatives, the path of least resisitance would have been to join their
reyai grouping. Homestead propinquity and the resulting social cohesion
in reyai and village groupings also influences membership in voluntary
associations. In both Tinpara and Hajipur, where cooperative societies
had been formed prior to my arrival and functioned as going concerns,
membership in the cooperatives of each village correlated with village
membership per se. Yet in the initial stages of cooperative formation,
men from other villages had joined either that of Hajipur or of Tinpara.
In all such instances I learned of, the non-villager members of these
societies eventually left and were instrumental in forming cooperatives
in their own bailiwicks. Tinpara and Hajipur villagers, in relating
these instances to me, indicated that the men concerned "felt more at
home" with their own neighbors, in that interaction between the members

of one village and those of another in group activities is normally min-

imal. It is thus not surprising that the outsiders in these instances

43

would prefer engaging in such an innovative practice as the formation
of an agricultural cooperative with members of more "traditional" social
groupings.10
Thus, relative proximity of settlement, the result of ecosystem
processes that originate in the extra-human environment as well as in
social relations, is one of the "intervening steps" in the process of
social organization. By creating the basis for group interaction, it
supports the development of extra-kinship ties by facilitating group in-

teraction. The formal expression of that interaction is seen in the

development of reyai, village, and samaj organizations.

The Process of Settlement

 

Earlier I discussed the great increase in population in the Camilla
area over the past 150 years. While it appears that the early popula-
ting of the active delta of Bengal was mainly the result of migration,
the population growth over the past decades has been in large part due
to natural increase. Webster (1910: 22-25) reported that population
growth between 1872 and 1901 proceeded practically independent of immi-
gration, noting that in 1901 less than 57,000 peOple were born outside
the district, about 3 percent of the total, while the total population
growth between 1891 and 1901 was 18.8 percent. There was, according to
webster, a certain amount of temporary migration, both from the northern
and southern bordering districts (Sylhet and Noakhali respectively) and
from Hill Tippera (the present day Indian Union Territory of Tripura
State), to the east.

But while, for Camilla District as a whole, migration appears to
have had a minimal effect on the population growth in recent years, this

is perhaps less so for the eastern-most thanas, such as that of Camilla

 

 

 

44

town and environs. Webster cited the greatest increase in population

at the turn of the century in the western-most thanas which lie along or
near the Meghna River and thus directly in the active delta area. But
the eastern thanas are on the fringe of the active delta area, where

the soil does not receive annual replentishment from silt deposits.
Thus, the fact that these eastern thanas have also increased in popula-
tion, and in some cases, such as that of Camilla Kotwali Thana today,
have higher papulation densities than do other more westerly thanas,
suggests that while absolute increase was in the long run greater to the
west, where population appears simply to have grown beyond bounds,
people migrated eastward, filling up the presumably less fertile areas
of Camilla District near the border of what is now Tripura State.

It is further relevant to note the varying circumstances under
which individual families have moved over the 150 year period in ques-
tion. A discussion of the qualitative aspects of settlement and migra-
tion should throw light on the recent historical background of present-
day social life in rural Camilla thana.

Much of what now constitutes Camilla Katwali Thana was, prior to
the Partition of India, part of a large zamindari estate, over which the
Rajas of Tripura had the rights of revenue collection. This zamindari,
known as the Chakla Roshnabad Estate, was an 80-mile stretch of terri-
tory on the plains of Bengal from Sylhet to Noakhali, much of it running
within only several miles of the current India-Pakistan border. The
estate was the only part of the plains left to the Rajas after 1732, a
date marking the end of a long see-saw for power in southeastern Bengal
between successive Tippera Hindu rules and the ever-expanding Muslim pow-
er to the southeast. After the British acceded to power in Bengal in

1765, the Rajas were allowed to retain internal ruling perogatives in

 

 

.ei

 

 

45

their hilly state (known as Hill Tippera District until 1947, thereaf-
ter Tripura State). They also continued to hold the rights of revenue
collection stemming from the pre-l765 arrangement with the Mughals.

The Chakla Roshnabad Estate was a large zamindari and, (given con—
ditions of transport and communication), impossible to manage directly.
Under the Rajas a fairly elaborate system of revenue collection and ad-
ministration was set up, directed from their capital-in Agartala, but
with several subsidiary headquarters of which Camilla Town was one. The
Central Division of the estate, in which Camilla Kotwali Thana was loca-
ted, required the employment of some 650 people at various administra-
tive levels in recent years, according to an account given me by a for-
mer tax collector. The estate was divided into units consistent with
the subdivisions established by the British. For the former Camilla
Sadar Subdivision, there was an Assistant Manager and a Deputy Manager.
That subdivision was.further divided into 12 taxable areas, each adminis-
tered by a tax collection office (tahsil kachari) in the charge of an
official known as a Naib. Under each of the offices was grouped a numr
ber of revenue mauzas, each of which was the administrative domain of a
tahsildar or tax collector. Under control of the Naibs were various.
petty officials: the gomasthas whose duties entailed the direct.collec-
tion of revenue from the larger tenants; the jomadars whose task it was
to police the more recalcitrant tenants.

In the 19th Century-the estate managers seemed to be faced with two
basic problems of administration. The first was that of bringing as
much land as possible under cultivation for the realization of rent.

The second and related problem'was.how most efficiently to administer

tax collection at the local level.

46

The first problem contained in part the seeds of its own solution,
in that with papulation growth, more lands were brought into_cultiva—
tion as a matter of course. The problem of efficient revenue collection
was attacked by granting the status of tahsildar to local villagers who
were given the responsibility for collection in one, several, or only
parts of, mauzas. In some cases, apparently, cultivators were enticed
into the Chakla Roshnabad area with the promise of such a position.
These men, moreover, were often the first cultivators to inhabit previ-
ously unsettled mauzas, gaining the rights to collect taxes from others
who came later. Another way in which local people participated in the
zamindari system in this part of Bengal was through the institution of
the Ijara. Under the Ijara system, the Raj farmed out on temporary
lease whole blocks of villages to men who could realize revenue from
them. In later years, when the banks in Camilla town lent large sums of
money to the Bajas against the collateral of land rights, the banks in
turn would lease out blocks of villages, sometimes indefinitely, to those
capable of collecting from them, be they town or village dwellers (Qadir
1960: 32-33). It appears to have been common to grant the status of
tahsildar or ijaradar to newcomers, even from central and northern India
(Qadir 1960: 33 provides an example of this and I knew of several famd-
lies outside my study area whose members claimed such an origin). Thus,
the tax collection system which relied on,a wide network of local offi-
cials seems to have set the basis for economic power and political lead-
ership at the local level - a point to which I shall return. At this
juncture I shall_simply point out that 4 of the 7 sardari lineages with
whose background I am familiar claim to have participated in the estate

administration at some point either as tahsildars or ijaradars.

47

It is possible to postulate 3 stages of settlement in Camilla
Katwali Thana as Qadir (1960: 46-50) has done. Prior to 1870 there was
a period of immigration, often not from great distances. From the
1870's onward there seems to have been a period on consolidation and
growth of local families, with established lineages growing to maximum
supportable size and then splitting off into lineage segments which
re-settled elsewhere. Finally, in recent years, phenomenal land pres-
sure appears to have stimulated settlement of previously undesirable.
areas or emigration to such areas elsewhere.

On_the basis of interviews at the time of collecting genealogical
data, I am able to account for the backgrounds of 15 out of 37 homer
stead-based patrilineages or 40.5 percent of my sample. I hasten to
add that the remaining informants were unable to state when their fore-
fathers came into the Camilla thana area - a "lapse of memory” charac—
teristic of peoples with shallow lineage systems - although this does
not necessarily mean that such "forgetful" villagers' families antedate
those for which I was able to obtain data. I present a summary of the
obtainable data in tabular form below.

Only two of the 15 lineages for which I have data show an inabil-
ity to state either exactly or approximately when they moved into the
area studied, although they are aware of relatively recent_origins in
the area. The respondents for 6 lineages could not identify from where
their forefather came, although they could recall the approximate time
period. It is.not surprising that inability to identify place of orie
gin increases proportionately with length of time in the current place
of residence. Significantly, however, of the 9 lineages whose respon-
dents could identify their place of origin, 8 indicated places within

the thana, an area of 107 square miles, 6 of these within-the same

48

TABLE 2

ORIGINS OF FAMILIES PRIOR TO CURRENT PLACE OF SETTLEMENT*

 

Years

Before. Same Contiguous Same Same Another~

1966-67 Mauza Mauza Union Thana Thana Unknown
25-50 2 - - l - 1
50-100 - l l, l l 2
100-150 - - - - - 3
unknown 2 - - - - -

 

Total -‘15 homesteads

*Not all these data refer to families in Hajipur and Tinpara alone, for
I have data from surrounding villages as well. I report these because
my aim is to show a process of settlement for the whole area.

union, currently about 18 square miles in area, and of the latter, 5
claim to have moved from within an area of less than 1 square mile.

These facts suggest some things about the process of village formation
and the relations between villages. Firstly, there appears to have been
a fair amount of shifting of residence over very short distances over
the past 100 years or so, a fact to which we also have the testimony of
such records as the district gazetteers. Secondly, most lineages origi—
nated near the mauzas and villages where they are now located and the
gradual splitting off of lineage segments has been part of the process.
Where the latter process has occurred, however, kinship ties between
villages of origin and villages of settlement have been maintained,
thereby adding to the social solidarity of a total area much wider than
the individual villages to or from which people have moved. To show
this process more clearly, I relate several examples of it below.

Example 2.

The Majumdars of Mauza Radhapur come originally from Sarail, an
area in the northern part of Camilla District which has been
shifted back and forth administratively between Sylhet and
Camilla Districts. When they were in Sarail the members of
this family bore the title Kazi, reflecting a post in the
Mughal and post-Mughal judicial system. Some 100 years ago,
members of this lineage were given the rights to collect taxes
in Camilla thana and they moved to Mauza Amtoli, which adjoins
Radhapur. For their position they obtained the title of
Majumdar by the Rajas of Tripura and retain that title today,
one of the few lineages to do so "legitimately" in the eyes of
their fellow villagers.

49

The Majumdars were able to amass a large amount of land, in-
cluding that which later became the location of Alirbazar.

They later moved on to some of that land in Mhuza Kawlatoli,
also adjacent to Radhapur and later part of the lineage split
off into a separate homestead in the southern para of Mhuza
Radhapur, although not part of Village Tinpara. The Majum-
dars retain some of the Alirbazar land today, renting the plots
for various shops to other villagers. They are regarded as

one of the most influential families in the area, their members
having been elected time and again to public office at the
local level, at least until very recently. This lineage is a
sardari lineage as well.

Example 3

Seventy-five to 100 years ago the family of Gazi Mia were
Ijaradars in a mauza in Chotobagh Union several miles to the
east of Islampur Union, for which service the present-day de-
scendants of Gazi Mia claim to have been given the title of
Majumdar. Gazi Mia inherited the title and the rights of
Ijaradar, with his brothers. He died, however, at the age of
30, of snake bite.

Now Gazi Mia had married a woman of Mhuza Kawlatoli in Islamr
pur Union (near Hajipur and Tinpara). Upon the death of her
husband, the woman returned to her natal homestead in Kawlatoli
taking with her her son, Amir Ali. When Amir Ali came came of
age he was given no inheritance, for his mother had not exer-
cised her rights in that regard when she had married out and
was never given land by her brothers when she moved back to
live with her brothers in Kawlapur. Amir Ali was fortunate,
however, in that his uncles on both sides of his family aided
him in getting a small plot of land in Mhuza Radhapur, just to
the north of his matrilateral relatives' homestead, in that
part of Radhapur which is part of the socially recognized vil—
lage I have called Tinpara.

The current members of that homestead are descendents of Amir
Ali, through his son, Abul Hossain and the homestead bears his
name (Abul Hossain Bari) to this day. The title majumdar no
longer is claimed by them and they take this as a symbol of the
fact that though their family has come through hard times, they
no longer have the position Gazi Mia once had.

Example 4

Mauza Rampur, a revenue unit of only 30-odd acres of land, can-
tiguous with Mhuza Imamgaon on the latter's southern end, was
once joined with it for purposes of revenue unit enumeration.

The current Mauza Rampur is the locus of 3 homesteads, one of
which is that of the dominant sardari lineage of Village Tinpara,
the master of which is Pradhan Ali, Sardar.

50

Pradhan Ali's great-grandfather, Gani Mia, was the first to settle
in Mauza Rampur and he succeeded in gaining the rights to revenue
collection in the area, particularly in Imamgaon which was at that
time uninhabited. Pradhan Ali is the sole surviving patrilineal
descendent of Gani Mia. His father's sister, Amine Khatun, was
married out to Mhuza Kawlatoli (see Example 1), but when her hus-
band died she returned to Rampur with her children. The two sons
of Amine Khatun were given land by their uncle, Pradhan Ali's
father, and live in a separate section (bhadra; see below for ex-
planation) of Pradhan Ali's homestead.

Pradhan Ali's grandfather had only one other son, who died unmar-
ried. The bulk of the inheritance left by his grandfather went

to Pradhan Ali. By contrast, Pradhan Ali's great-uncle, Ahmen
Ali, had 4 sons, among whom his prOperty had to be divided and
later subdivided among their surviving sons and daughters. This
branch of the lineage as a result owns less land. A generation
ago, the descendants of Ahmed Ali split off from Pradhan Ali's
homestead, forming another nearby; they still recognize their pat-
rilineal connection (see Kinship Diagram 1). This homestead was
the second one to be established in Rampur. The third is that

of a recent arrival, Chanu Mia, a specialist in the curing of
cattle illnesses, whose settlement was facilitated by Pradhan Ali,
despite the fact that there is no kinship connection between the
two.

Pradham Ali similarly aided the settlement of another homestead,
also a part of Village Tinpara, that of Fazlur Rahman in the
southern para of Mhuza Imamgaon, whose descendants initially
lived there at the sufferance of the first settlers. In later
times Pradhan Ali was still able to influence who would be taken
into that homestead. Despite several marriages, Pradhan Ali has
no son, a fact which obviously concerned him at the time of my
research. Some years earlier, he learned of a twice-divorced
woman whose origins were outside the thana and who was left
homeless by her second divorce. The woman had an infant son.
Pradhan Ali was able to arrange the lodging of that woman in

the homestead of Fazlur Rahman, on the condition that she aid
his (Pradhan Ali's) wife in household tasks. When her infant
son grew old enough to work he was taken into the homestead of
Pradhan Ali as a laborer, in the place of the son that Pradhan
Ali never had (although the boy was never formally adopted).

The young fellow remains in that status in Pradhan Ali's home-
stead, earning Rs. 225 a year plus room and board.

Example 5

Bela Mia Bari is located on the western border of Mauza Radhapur.
It is not part of Village Tinpara, but rather its inhabitants

are united in a reyai grouping whose "core" homesteads are in
Mauza Reshompur, to which Bela Mia Bari is closer than any others.

A generation ago, Dona Mia, one of 4 brothers, married a girl
connected to Munsh£(clerk) Bari in Mauza Hajipur (the Munshis do

51

Aenfieeav
sowee>uv
useuooson I

nonsense I O <

unsung. sander, no nude Jone—mm dug! a.“
memoueoaom 039 courses moofiuoeosoo Hemaaaquuem

«Hum .34 woe—Bane: when .32 canvmum

_ «and ma:
aa< aaevaum a _ some a aaea: a

all? ".l—L

_
HH< .e: 4 a “He aaa< a unease aaaa< Hue
_

<

-h-"— d

a
TTTF

_
.34 6035 e a: Samson ~ _
_

 

_‘_——<
‘_——-__-

 

 

 

max «new 1F

H 2554.5 mHmmzHM

52

not claim her as a kinswoman, although Dona Mia's descendants in-
sist that she was). Be that as it may, Dona Mia moved out of his
natal homestead, lived with his wife in Hajipur's Munshi Bari for
a while, then moved to a houseplot within 25 years of the Munshi
Bari. His descendants continue to live there. Dona Mia's eon
became proficient as a native curer (kobiraj) and the homestead
is now commonly referred to as Kbbiraj Bari. Kobiraj and Munshi
Baris, plus one other located nearby, lie in Hajipur's northern
para, forming one of Hajipur's 3 reyais, the sardar of which is a
member of Munshi Bari.

Dona Mia's sister, Khatuni Bibi, married Alim Mia, of Mauza
Hajipur, who then lived in a homestead in the western end of
Hajipur. Dona Mia's and Khatuni Bibi's brother, Kasim Mia, who
remained in the Radhapur homestead, had no sons by either of

two marriages. He persuaded his sister to allow him to adapt her
second son, Afaz Mia (the practice of "giving" youngest sons to
male heirless kinsmen occasionally occurs, for which occurence I
have other examples). Afaz Mia is not the senior member of Bela
Mia Bari, in Mauza Radhapur, part of Village (gram) Reshampur.
Alim Mia of Hajipur lost his land after the adoption of Afaz Mia.
His first son, Sayadur Rahman (Afaz Mia's elder brother), was
forced to shift to a smaller homestead plot in Hajipur. He was
clearly one of Hajipur's most impoverished villagers at the time
of my research.

Three of Alim Mia's 4 brothers married and went to live "in their
(respective) fathers-in—law's houses" (see below for a more de-
tailed discussion of "uxorilocal residence" as it is defined in
Bengal). One brother married into Hajipur's Majumdar Bari;
another married into and became the head of the current members
of a homestead in Mauza (and Village) Reshampur, the third leav-
ing altogether.

Thus, through a process of fission, involving marriages, changes
of residence after marriage, and the adoption of children 5 home-
steads in 3 mauzas and 2 grams are linked in.a web of kinship.
This process has contributed to the settlement of the villages
under study, with both agnatic and affinal kinsmen distributed
throughout several mauzas and grams. (See Kinship Diagram 2).

Example 6

Jiban Ali Bari in Mauza Reshampur contains descendants of a man
who moved into the area from another part of Islampur Union 3
generations ago. The current members of the homestead comprise
the families of 2 groups of brothers descended from Jiban A11.
The total land owned by these 5 men is very small, even by local
standards (less than 4 acres total, whereas the average for Haji-
pur and Tinpara is about 1.5 acres per farm). They subsist
largely by day labor and, when possible, they lease land from the
major sardari family in Reshampur. Their wives occasionally work
at polishing rice in the 2 more prosperous homesteads in Reshampur,
an arduous task for which they receive a minimal payment in kind.

53

...- . gee-.- pause-

J

 

 

 

mowaaaa> aze.opaa

mueoEMom ammosaq «a Hawaommam one

 

 

Homanom

 

 

Hemsaemom .Hamm Ha

 

Homandm .Haam

Hensomwom

neafimmm

 

.aaam was.

when

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

dmmnm ese.oe
$de XXX/v.1
maom

JIOVOUH grill—In...

"‘

 

ea;
8.83..

 

 

.>\I\r an X see 0 e * .Jr
x “N ea . AN . a.4.*
.1; M e e x. at:
. M , . x H H a x
~ a x mm . . .3:
x x a o . . Minoan a0 w.aa
V . a AW a, e . A“ H A.\ ewmmmmrfia
J _ x p e . xa,+
. up x o e s
0 VP \' a“ H e H
~ x up 0 .H .
. i e. W . . 7
l o I . o .e
V“ Molar». MT 3 . V . 8&mfiwVHmvammM—ms
e Kr 7.1% LI e a

N.Eofiwoan maSmSax

 

 

 

Isl”—

red.

54

Several years ago, one of these men, Hakim Mia, learned of the possibil-
ity of obtaining land in Ramghar, a foothill area in the Chittagong

Hill Tracts, about 60 miles by road away from Camilla town. The Govern-
ment of Pakistan is encouraging immigration into this thinly populated
hill area, granting plots of land on favorable terms. Hakim Ali sold

a little over 1 acre of his land in the Reshampur area, using the money
received to buy clearing rights to 3 times as much land in Ramghar. At
the time of my research Hakim Ali was "commuting" back and forth from
Camilla to Ramghar, staying there for a week or 10 days at a time, sup-
ervising the laborers whom he had hired locally to clear the land. He
was planning to move his entire family there not long after the point at
which I left the area.

His cousin, Dudu Mia, became interested in the prospects of obtaining
land in Ramghar and during my stay in Hajipur and Tinpara he had begun
the same process of selling his land in Reshampur and taking land in
Ramghar. During the entire period of my stay in the area, talk of the
new land developments in Ramghar was common among villagers and while
I knew of no others besides Hakim Ali and Dudu Mia who had actually
taken steps to move, the possibility of doing so was on the minds of
many villagers with whom I had casual contact.

Example 7

Taz Mia lives in Mauza Shonapur, his homestead situated on the flanks

of the Lalmai Hills to the west of Hajipur and Tinpara. Taz Mia lives
with his married son and grandchildren, in a small homestead he con-
structed some 25 years ago when he moved up into the hills from a

mauza just south of Tinpara. The Lalmai Hills are not preferred as
either a dwelling place or a cultivation area, but Taz Mia gave as

one of the reasons for his move the fact of land pressure in the lower
lying lands. Over the years he and his son have managed to subsist
relatively well. They have amassed some 21 Rania, or 8.4 acres, of
land, all of it sloping and uneven. They cultivate rice on the less
steeply inclined of their plate, but also grow arum plants in the san-
dier soils, as well as roof thatch, which is a good commerical invest-
ment. They face the continual problem of erosion of their fields, which
they have partially solved by surrounding their rice plots with trenches
some 4-5 feet deep in places. Similarly, they have had to dig trenches
around the homestead plot itself, and the inner courtyard must be con—
tinuously drained as well. Taz Mia joked about his formerly solitary
existence in the hills, claiming that the preceding 10 years had brought
him neighbors (although none were in sight of his homestead) from the
lower lying villages who also had faced the problem of scarcity of land.

These examples illustrate the stages of settlement to which I have refer-

Examples 2 and 3 are reflective of the first stage of settlement which

occurred in the 19th Century. The Majumdars of Radhapur came into the

Camilla thana area as tax collectors and, gaining local prominence in that

55

position, have been able to maintain it over successive generations. By
contrast, the descendants of Gazi Mia represent the decline and dismember-
ment of a formerly prosperous family, the branches of which were relocated
in Village Tinpara; only in this generation have they begun to re-establish
themselves as a locally respected family. Example 4 is similar, reflecting
the way in which a previously unsettled, but taxable, piece of land was in-
habited and how, by the process of fission, new homesteads are created. In
Example 4 the transition from the first to the second stage, that of build-
ing up of settlement from the branching off of lineage segments. This
stage is shown in more detail by Example 5, which traces the interconnec-
tions of kinship between a number of homesteads located in continguous
mauzas and villages. In this instance, the process of fission and reloca-
tion of older, more established, but overcrowded, lineages is seen, as sons
marry out or voluntarily establish themselves in neo-local situations. Ex-
amples 6 and 7 represent the third, contemporary stage, a continuation of
this time-worn process. Here the plight of the land-poor and landless lin-
eage segments of individual homesteads is brought out in bold relief, with
the alternative of relocating to hilly and less desirable areas, often at

relatively great distances.11

CHAPTER IV

ECONOMIC ADAPTATIONS TO THE DELTAIC ENVIRONMENT

I have dealt at some length with the impact of population increase and
density on the pattern of rural settlement in Villages Hajipur and Tinpara
and their neighbors. In this chapter I suggest that population has had
its impact in another important way.

The diachronic interaction of papulation, environment and technology
have contributed to an economy of scarcity which has had a primordial in-
fluence on the pattern and quality of social life in these villages. First-
ly, the relative recency of settlement and a limited range of variation in
the size of land-holdings have resulted in a surprisingly little-differen-
tiated occupational structure in the villages. This occupational pattern
has been maintained and in turn affects the pattern of social stratification
in that population densities have affected land ownership and thus the accu-
mulation of wealth. Finally, competition for land has rendered conflict
endemic to the area.

Population pressure and its influence on land tenure are major factors
in a total economy of scarcity. The basis of that economy is rice agri-
culture which takes place against the background of the almost whimsical
variability of a monsoon climate. Ninety percent of the cropped area of
the thana is devoted to the cultivation of rice, with sugar cane, local vege-
tables, pulses, and spices comprising subsidiary crops. As I have noted,
soils vary in mixtures of sand and clay, but on the whole, the Brahmaputra
alluvium is a fertile nurturant to the seeds of rice on which the cultiva-

tor's hopes are seasonally pinned.

'56

57

Yet beneficient soils are hardly suffice to ensure good crops. A
canstant'and controllable supply of water is the other sina qua non of wet-
rice agriculture and in this respect the dependence of the Bengali peasant
on the monsoans begets the major weakness of his agricultural system.
Rainfall in sufficient quantities for farming can be expected during 6 to
8 months of the year - at best from late March to mid-October - allowing, in
combination with the gestation period for most native rice varieties, for
two major crops a year. Planting of the first crop (aus) begins with the
first rainfall in early Spring, aiming at a mid-July harvest. The aus har-
vest takes place concommitantly with the planting of the second crop (amen),
to be cut in late December and early January. Under pre—modern technological
conditions, a third crap (boro) in the intervening dry season is possible
only on plate of land located near sources of water - rivers, streams, or
man-made ponds ("tanks" in Anglo-Indian dialect; puskarini, pukur in Bengali).

Monsoon agriculture subjects the cultivator to three basic hazards.
Firstly, if the rains do not fall early enough, the chances for 2 full crops
are diminished for lack of time. Secondly, if the rains fall too heavily, on
the one hand, or if they are bestowed in too niggardly a fashion on the other,
there is the threat of crop loss due to flooding or dryness. Thirdly, if the
monsoon ends too early in the year, there is every possibility that the stan—
ding crop will not receive sufficient moisture toward the end of its matura-
tion period and the yield will be greatly reduced relative to the potential.
Thus, in addition to a long dry spell in which at best a small crap is possible
for a few cultivators, during the wet season most face the continual possi-
bility that their efforts will be poorly rewarded or even put to naught by the
vagaries of a monsoon climate.

A further consideration is the fact of great fragmentation and scattered

58

location of land plate, a condition long recognized to be a serious impediment
to agricultural modernization. With its huge population, it is not surpris-
ing that East Pakistan is perhaps archetypically a land of minifundia. Ninety
percent of farms in the province as a whole report some degree of fragmenta-
tion, 52 percent of them with from 6 to over 10 plate per farm; 91 percent of
the farms in Camilla District report fragmentation, 44 percent with from 6 to
over 10 plate each (Census of Agriculture 1960: 86 ff., Table 10). Qadir
(1960: 84-89), in a detailed study of land problems of a Camilla thana vil-
lage, found that the average overall size of plots there was .31 acres; my
own very approximate estimates from Hajipur and Tinpara range around .25

acres per plot. Qadir (1960: 61-62) estimated that in a period of 66 years
the number of plots in the village he studied nearly doubled, from 242 in

1894 to 453 in 1960, the average size of farm decreasing from 4.8 acres to

1.9 acres in the same period. Such has been the impact of population growth
and norms of inheritance which require equal division of property (see dis-
cussion below).

To all this must be added another limiting factor. Given the levels of
production needed to feed so large a population, available technology does
not suffice in overcoming the environmental constraints imposed on agricul-
tural activities. This is so despite the fact that the "traditional" equip-
ment of the Bengali peasant is remarkably well-adapted to a deltaic environ-
ment, when one considers the sophisticated use of natural materials relative
to levels of knowledge. The judicious use of household compost, for example,
cannot rival the yields made possible by chemical fertilizers correctly ap-
plied. Several varieties of iron-tipped wooden plow are artistically hewn
by members of the Hindu carpenter caste, shaped from various woods and in
slightly differing forms, each appropriate to soil type and season of pro-

jected use of the implement. But, used universally with bullock-traction,

59

these tools cannot compete with the speed and efficiency of the machine-powered
tiller. For irrigation purposes, village drainage ditches are constructed by
sometimes ingenious local "civil engineering" methods and fed by bamboo-wo-

ven "water shovels", either of the 2-man swing variety (heyat) or a scoop-
shaped type (hat heyat) which can be used by a single man. But these techni-
ques cannot bring large amounts of water over long distances to sun-parched
plots of rice. The inadequacies of irrigation methods are all the more unfor-
tunate when one considers the fact that the ideal climatic period for culti-
vation is the dry season, assuming modern methods of assuring an adequate water
supply. In a word, innovations in agricultural methods and technology amounting
to a veritable quantum leap are essential if the East Pakistani cultivator is
eventually to attain adequate levels of food production.12

It is not surprising, then, that rice production is low. Average "good"
yields in Hajipur and Tinpara range between 20 and 30 maundb13 per acre or
between 1,600 and 2,500 pounds. More often than not even this amount is not
forthcoming in an average harvest. Low production has a variety of conse-
quences, not the least of which is, of course, the lowering of quantitative and
qualitative food consumption levels. Here, however, its effect on the struc-
ture of social relations must be considered.

Under conditions of unpredictability in natural environment, lowblevel
technological development and heavy population, the only manner in which sub-
sistence, not to speak of surplus, can be maintained, is to have an adequate
supply of land. But, the small size of holdings - 1.5 acres per farm in Haji-
pur and Tinpara - makes mere subsistence practically difficult for most, im-
possible for not a few, families. Population size and competition for land

place a premium on land ownership, rendering relative differences in ownership

of even a minute scale potentially quite significant.

60

As I have suggested, the, while in Camilla thana nobody starves, the
problem of keeping body and soul together is solved in an only haphazardly
successful manner and with considerable effort. The cultivator who has the
average of 1.5 acres of land or less finds great difficulty in maintaining

adequate levels of subsistence along with capital reinvestment at the same

time. The man with 2 acres of land or better can meet his family's needs"
more adequately. But many with these amounts or less are obliged at some time
or other to borrow either food or cash or otherwise to work for wages and

rent land.‘ For an economy of such scarcity engenders a great deal of bar-
rowing and lending of goods and services, merely for subsistence purposes.

At the same time, there is a significant number of farms who depend on len—
ding activities as a major or even the most important part of their income.
These activities of exchange are centrally relevant to the discussiOn of

social structure.

Hypothetical Illustration 1: The Hazards of Subsistence

With an average of 1.5 acres of land, on which 2 "good" harvests in a
given year are grown, a yield of about 3,200 pounds of paddy can be
expected. Assuming for the moment that the total year's crop is con-
sumed by the cultivator's family, this means that after husking the
yield is by the very process (of husking) reduced to two-thirds the
harvested amount or about 2,100 pounds. Per capita consumption esp
timates provided by Kalimuddin Ahmed (1965: 86-87) allow the calcula-
tion that about 1,800 pounds of cereals - largely rice - is the aver-
age amount consumed by a family of 5 in rural East Pakistan per year
(the average family size per separate household in Hajipur and Tinpara
is 5.5). Thus under optimum conditions, assuming that rice alone is
grown on his land (although in practice vegetables, pulses and spices
are also grown), a cultivator with 1.5 acres can in fact feed his
family in a manner consistent with the provincial average, with a
little paddy left over for possible sale and capital reinvestment.
However, most farms of this size in Camilla thana produce little more
than 1,600 pounds of paddy alone in a given year (even with 2 crops),
providing clearly less than enough to meet average consumption levels
as reported by Ahmed for the province (in 1963); see Farkhanda Akhtar
(1966: a and b) for estimates of average yields in Camilla thana. It
should be nated, moreover, that I deal here only with food consumption
items in the abstract~and do not treat the costs of capital reinvest-
ment, debt repayment, payment for services and non-food consumption
items, all of which would normally be counted in a thorough estimate

61

of cultivators' incomes.

Another kind of estimate of cultivators' ability to subsist is provi-

ded by Qadir (1960: 59-61). Assuming on the basis of villagers' own

estimates of 2.5 acres as necessary to maintain a standard of living

"on a moderate level" (sic; Qadir ibid.), Qadir shows that cultiva-

ting family of 4 with 1.9 acres of land (the average for the village

he studied) can raise more than the consumption requirement of the

postulated "moderate" level. Nonetheless, he calculates, such a fami-

ly will fail by 50 percent to meet the surplus amount required to ex-

change for non-consumption items of goods and services, as well as for

capital reinvestment.

These examples treat only the plight of the relatively well-off peasant
families; for the poor and landless, the situation is far more precarious.
At the same time, some of these "middle level" cultivators rely for their
incomes precisely on their neighbors' constant need for cash and land. Final-
ly, the relatively few "wealthy" cultivators also depend on the plight of
their neighbors at all lower levels of wealth as a key means of income.
Money lending and land rent thus function at all levels of the peasant econo-
my. Indeed, as Calkins (1969) has shown, this appears to have been the case
for a long time. According to Calkins, under the Mughal revenue collection
system in 18th century Bengal, the men who operated at its lower levels -
the mustajirs who bid for and won the rights of collection over one or several
mauzas - were dependent on the local mahajans to finance their activities and
to support their payments to the higher authorities in times of need. And,
as I have earlier noted, even the large landlords - the Rajas of Tippera, for
example - were obliged to depend on banks to pay their rent quotes in some
years - a dependence which produced the ijara system of tax collection in
Camilla thana that I have discussed. Thus, it would appear that, as else-
where (modern America no exception), in Bengal, money lending has been impor-

tant in economic relations for a long time. Today's Bengali peasants are in-

deed inheritors of that "Great Tradition."

62

There are 4 basic ways in which to lend and borrow money and rice or
to rent land. Of these, one of the most common, and that which carries the
highest risk, is lending cash or kind without collateral. While I did not
collect data on the frequency of this practice in Hajipur and Tinpara, it
is clear from general discussions with villagers that a number of them,
especially the poorest, were heavily indebted, particularly from rice loans.
A recent study (Ali Akhtar Khan 1968: 22) from another Camilla thana village
reports that nearly half the loans taken by villagers surveyed were without
collateral or security of any sort. If, however, a man lends Rs. 100 in
cash or its equivalent in kind, to another with little or no collateral, it
is the common practice to accept payment in kind, usually in the amount and
form of between 4 to 5 maunds of hueked rice (chaZ). At optimum market rates,
a maund of chaZ can be sold at about Rs. 40 to 45. Thus, a lender who has
been repaid for a loan of Rs. 100 in this way in effect receives interest
at a rate of between 60 and 80 percent.

From the point of view of the lender, the use of land as collateral is
a far less risky proposition. Firstly, the land is given to the lender in
uoufructuary mortgage, in most cases, thus entitling him to the yield of the
land for as long as the loan remains unpaid. This practice is so profitable
that lenders are quite willing to allow loans to go unpaid indefinitely. On
this point, Ali Akhtar Khan (1968: 25) comments:

"Since the agriculturalist lenders enjoy the annual output of

land as interest on their money, they do not bother about reali-

sation of debt. They rather like to continue (sic) their posses-

sion on such mortgaged land by not realising debt."
Secondly, once land is mortaged (bandak) as loan collateral, the possibility
of foreclosure allows the lender to anticipate the eventual full possession

of the land, given the difficulties of the borrower in repaying his loan.

In fact, it is commonly assumed that land, once mortgaged, is as good as

63

lost - "sold" in effect as much less than its market value. One of my infor-
mants described the plight of his debtors in this respect in simple and mat-
ter-of-fact tones: "They will not see this land again!" (tara si jami Er
dekhbe n3). Indeed, for the borrower, the mortgaging of his land is a seri-
ous affair.

Land mortgage is thus a reasonably common method of financing loans.
Out of 110 cases of land transcations that I recorded, a total of 63 or 57
percent were in the form of mortgage. Of a total of 102 farms, 24 or 23.5
percent had land in mortgage. The usufructuary mortgage is profitable to the
lender not only in terms of the return to his investment; it is also a major

mode of land transfer in these villages.

Hypothetical Illustration 2: The Economics of the Mortgage

Information about the arrangements for 10 mortgages was collected. For
the sample of 10, the average amount of money loaned was RS. 403 for
collateral averaging .193 acres of land. It was thus possible to esti-
mate that 1 acre of land would be needed to obtain a loan of Rs. 2,088
(19.3/100 X 403/x - 2088).

It is thus possible to calculate a rate of interest as follows. Under
usufructuary mortgage, assuming 2 better than average harvests a year,
the yield from 1 acre of land would be ca. Forty maunds (20 maunds per
harvest) per year. Further assuming immediate sale of paddy at the

time of harvest (and often in fact it is hoarded) at ca. Rs. 30 per
maund, the total amount realized would be ca. Rs. 1,200 per year.

Thus, the return to the initial investment of Rs. 2,088 would be around
56 percent of the capital; this equates to an effective rate of interest
of nearly 60 percent.

Another way of looking at the mortgage is to view it as, in effect, a
"sale." A borrower faces great problems in repaying his loan. For he
most devote whatever land he has left not only to repayment, but also

to subsistence; several years' effort are thus required, assuming "good"
harvests, to meet the demands of his creditor, and he may never succeed
in so doing. The market value of 1 acre of land at the time of research
was ca. Rs. 3,000. As noted, 1 acre of land also served as collateral
for a loan of ca. Rs. 2,000. In the event that the borrower failed to
repay his creditor, the latter can be said, in effect, to have purchased
the land in question for two thirds of its market value.

Thus, lending money in return for a usufructuary mortgage is a profitable
business, entailing a minimum of risk.

64

It should also be noted that none of these practices is thought to violate
the well-known Islamic norms against usury and the taking of interest. ‘Firstly,
the taking of payment in kind for a loan of cash is by consensual definition
not regarded as accumulating interest. Indeed, given the vagaries of the'mar-
ket, it is not always certain that the sale of rice taken as loan payment will
yield the optimum potential cash value and thus reward the lender with an ade-
quate return on his principle. This is perhaps one of the reasons why husked
rice (chaZ), more readily sold at top prices in any season, is usually deman-
ded as the form of loan repayment. Secondly, the fact that the yield of land
given as security accrues to the lender is not considered to be tantamount to
interest per se. Thirdly, the loss of land due to inability to repay is simply
viewed as a "sale" of that land, albeit at one-third less than its market value;
surely the Prophet himself could despise so excellent a purchase!

Mareover, the loss of some land in mortgage is sometimes tolerated by cul-
tivators capable of redeeming it in order to make better transactions with what
little capital they might acquire. That is, a man who has mortgaged less val-
uable land might prefer to utilize capital subsequently obtained to buy better
land, rather than redeem his mortgaged plots. For even the more wealthy culti-
vators have at best small amounts of capital to use and they must calculate
the optimum benefits from each set of circumstances in order that it not.be
wasted. Thus, a single individual may appear in statistics on rural credit as
creditor and debtor at the same time.

The remaining forms of exchange to be discussed here are those of renting
land via lease and share cropping. It is interesting that in fact these two
forms of lending are less frequent in Hajipur and Tinpara and in Camilla Dis-
trict than in the province as a whole. Only 11 or 10.7 percent of all farms in

Tinpara and Hajipur reported cases of leasing and sharecropping. [According to

65

the Census of Agriculture (1960: 55, Table 5), only 20 percent of all farms
in Camilla District are reported as "owner-cum-tenant" farms.] Outright
tenancy in the district is less than .5 percent of farms and it did not
exist in Hajipur or Tinpara at the time of my research. This is explainable
partly by the fact that land poor and landless cultivators supplement their

meager incomes by other means, usually those of unskilled or skilled labor.

Hypothetical Illustration 3: The Economics of Lease and SharecrOpping

Detailed information was collected for 10 lease arrangements, 5 for
cash, 5 on a kind basis. For the cash transactions it was found that

an average of .40 acres was leased for an average of Rs. 197 per crap
over a 2-crop period. Thus the rent rate could be calculated as Rs. 492
per acre per 2-crop period. For the 5 transactions involving payment

in kind, it was found that an average of .50 acres was rented for an
average of 6 maunds a crop over a 2-crop period, or a rate of 12 maunds
of paddy per 2-crop period.

Let us assume 2 better than average harvests over the 2-cr0p period,
yielding a total of ca. 40 maunds per acre, and that this is sold im-
mediately at Rs. 30 per maund, the gross receipts totalling Rs. 1,200.
Payment in kind at a rate of 12 maunds per 2-crop period yields a rent
rate of ca. 30 percent (12/40 = .30) of the total crop value. Payment
in cash at a rate of Rs. 492 per 2-crop period yields a rent rate of
ca. 40 percent (Rs. 492/Rs. 1,200 - .41) of total crop value. These
figures would vary with prices, the type of land and the quality of
paddy grown. Thus they are meant to be merely suggestive of the eco-
nomics of land rent.

Actual cases of sharecropping are not enumerated here because the uni-

versal standard of rent is that of equal division of the crap between

owner and tenant, or a rate of rent amounting to 50 percent. Perhaps
for this reason sharecroppers are often called adhiars (from adhar,
meaning "one-half") - "those who rent for half the crop."

In a peasant society, land ownership and land relations provide the key
link between economy and social structure. Firstly, as I have noted, varying
types of land and their soils influence importantly the pattern of rural
settlement, with implications in turn for the structure of social relations.
Secondly, the location of lands, the degree of plot fragmentation, and the

norms regarding its possession (whether communal or individual) and transmis-

sion (whether via partible or impartible inheritance), help to locate the foci

66

TABLE 3

FARM SIZE IN HAJIPUR AND TINPARA

 

 

acres N* Z

0.00 10 9.80

.01 - .49 17 16.67

.50 - .99 18 17.65
1.00 - 1.49 15 14.71
1.50 - 1.99 13 12.75
2.00 - 2.49 8 7.84
2.50 - 2.99 6 5.88
3.00 - 3.49 6 5.88
3.50 - 3.99 -- -----
4.00 — 4.49. 2 1.96
4.50 - 4.99 4 3.92
5.00 - 8.00+ 3** 2.94
Totals 102 100.00

Hajipur: 100.68 acres
54 farms*
1.8 acres per farm

Tinpara: 58.69 acres
54 farms
1.2 acres per farm

Both: 159.37 acres
102 farms
1.5 acres per farm

median land ownership per farm, both villages = 1.15

*N - number farms. There are actually 104 chulas or economic family units,
but 3 of these in Hajipur are combined in a lineal collateral joint owner-
ship arrangement despite separate cthas. Hence, the actual N farms - 102.

** Holdings of these 3 are: 7.96 acres; 8.00 acres; and 8.80 acres.

67

of rural people's activities and thus the territorial, as well as the social,
organization of peasant communities. Thirdly, relative differences in land
ownership and control are crucial, if not the sole, determinants of the
distribution of status, power and influence.

For these reasons, it is necessary to determine the nature of land rela-
tions in the study of peasant communities, if something of their social organ-
ization is to be understood. A discussion of land ownership in Hajipur and
Tinpara should help to throw light on the character of these communities.

In both villages most families own some land. As indicated in Table 3,
however, the vast majority of them are holders of exceedingly small "farms,"
a characteristic of the rural economy of East Pakistan and of Bengal in gen-
eral. The term "farm" will be used here to indicate a separate productive
unit organized on the basis of kinship, although this should not be taken to
Tmean that all "farms" indicate purely agricultural producing units. Moreover,
the term "family" - used here as a convenient form of reference - is techni-
cally a misnomer in some cases, in that these are single individuals who none-
theless are separate with respect to their economic activities. For example,
there are several widowers who have no families to support, but own, culti-

15 without small child-

vate or rent out land; there are several cases of widows
ren who live separately from their adult children and who own and rent out
land - or have none; finally, there are cases of individual men who are land-
less and work at day labor or the like with no wives or families.

Some of the single individuals are among the landless. Of those remain-
ing in this category, several men have special skills which help them to earn
some income as, for example, a specialist in roof thatching whose services are
often in demand. But in general, the landless must rely on field labor for

wages or else other unskilled occupations. Several are rickshaw pullers, ad-

ding to the thousands of such men of all ages who ply the streets and roads of

68

Camilla town and environs.16

In addition to the landless, the vast majority of land holders in Haji-
'pur and Tinpara own less than the average amount of land. These also must
supplement their incomes by wage labor. Some have a special occupation
which serves them in this regard; notably, the Hindu carpenter and washerman
families are in this category. Others work at field labor, some engage in
petty trading17 and not a few rent land. This group is continually in debt,
and in many instances large portions of their farms, small though they may be,
are mortgaged.

If there is a "typical" Hajipur or Tinpara cultivator, it is he who owns
between the median (1.15 acres) and the mean (1.5 acres) ownership for both
villages. But these "typical" cultivators do not form an undifferentiated
mass. Some are heavily in debt and must rely on loans or rented land from
one year to the next or must work for wages. Most of this group do not rely,
however, on rented land nor are they continually obliged to borrow money.
Moreover, aside from an occasional loan, they do not consistently engage in
money or land lending practices nor do they regularly sell or hire labor.

But a (third) significant segment of this group in fact does rely on creditor
activities as a crucial component of its income and so is perceptibly disting-
uishable from.others in this category.

Those who own more than 4 acres are, relative to the rest of their neigh-
bors, well-to-do men. Of these same cultivate their own lands, especially if
they have adult sons who can collectively perform most of the required labor.
Nor, so far as I could ascertain, do all well-to-do cultivators engage in
creditor activities to any appreciable extent. (It is not uncommon to find
that well-to-do cultivators are indebted to a greater extent than are their

less fortunate neighbors, although in these cases the debt is likely to be

69

to commerical or government credit institutions and to have been incurred

for capital, not consumption, expenditures. (See Ali Akhtar Khan 1968: 24-31).
In Hajipur and Tinpara, nearly half the well-to—do cultivators do, however,
engage in creditor activities as a means of further accumulation.

It is thus possible to distinguish broad aggregates of cultivators,
groupings ranked with respect to land ownership and economic activities, as
I attempt to do in Table 4. This is a procedure used by Marxist students of
peasantry who begin discussions of social stratification with categories
based primarily on economic rank (see e.g., Mao tse-tung 1927, 1933; Alavi
1965; Hinton 1966, Chapter 2 and Appendix C; Gough 1968-69). This procedure
serves as the means whereby the link between economy.and social structure can
be perceived. The next step in the analysis is to study the correlations be—
tween economic and political power, either synchronically or diachronically
and, where exact correlations between the two cannot be established, to
explain the manifestation of power under the given conditions. Finally, a
holistic study of social stratification seeks further to understand the rela-
tionship - or its lack - between these variables and those of status and gen-
eral life style. One of the most conceptually useful of recent studies of
South Asian peasantry in this regard is that of Beteille (1966), whose ap-
proach has influenced that taken here.

Table 4 represents the beginning of analysis of the link between economy
and social structure in Hajipur and Tinpara. The categories in this table
are not wholly arbitrary, for in choosing them I have attempted to reflect
not only relative wealth but economic activities as well. Moreover, while
the categories are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, the reader
‘will rightly assume progressive shadings in land ownership at either end of

each category in the arranged continuum. As Table 3 indicates, between the

70

land poor and middle cultivators, there is little absolute difference in land
holdings, for nearly all families in both villages have less than the average
amount of land. That average is, of course, raised by the higher end of the
range, in which only 3 cultivators have more than 5 acres of land. For this
reason, the median holding of 1.15 acres has been arbitrarily used as the
dividing point between the land poor and the middle categories. Thus, between
the poor and middle peasants, very little difference in ownership can be per-
ceived and it follows hypothetically that the distinction between these in
status and power is also small. Moreover, the fact that a number of middle
peasants are heavily in debt demonstrates the continual threat of downward
‘mobility (due to loss of land) to families in the middle categories. Nor

are rich peasant families immune to this threat. At the same time, certain
middle peasants share with certain rich ones the economic activities of the
creditor. This is not always the case for purely economic reasons, for a
creditor with relatively little land may be motivated by prestige and status
considerations, for example, to lease his land rather than work it himself.
Finally, the use of the term "rich peasant" as a categorical designation must
be understood in relative terms. Clearly, those I have designated as "rich
peasants" are not very rich at all in any absolute sense. My use of the
term here is merely consistent with the technical distinction made by the
other writers whose works I have cited between "landlord" and "rich peasant."
In contradistinction to the "landlord" class, "rich peasants" are defined in
their studies as cultivators who as a group own, and in part work themselves,
the largest holdings in a community and as a rule rely on wage labor, share-
cropping and land rent as a major source of wealth accumulation. Despite
the seeming inappropriateness of the term "rich peasant" the technical defi-
nition advanced here is consonant with present East Pakistani land holding

\

71

TABLE 4

CULTIVATORS CLASSED BY LAND OWNERSHIP AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR

 

 

Class N % Grouped %
landless 10 9.8

} 44.1 poor
land poor 35 34.3
debtor middle 6 5.9
nan-debtor middle 30 29.4 } 47.1 middle
creditor middle 12 11.8
non-creditor rich 5 4.9

} 8.8 rich
creditor rich 4 3.9
Totals 102 100.0 100.0

Definitions

 

landless: Own 0.00 acres; sell skilled or unskilled labor.

land poor: Own less than 1.15 acres; supplement income by wage labor; may
also rent land or borrow money to extent of more than 50% total farm value.

debtor middle: Own 1.15-3.99 acres; may sell labor; may rent land or borrow
money to more than 20% of total farm value.

non-debtor middle: Own 1.15-3.99; occasionally hire or sell labor; do not rent
land out or lend money to more than 10% of total farm value.

creditor middle: Own 1.15-3.99 acres; rent out land or lend money to extent
of more than 20% of total farm value.

rich non-creditor: Own more than 4 acres; do not rent out land or loan money
to more than 10% of total farm value; may hire labor, but usually work
own farm.

rich creditor: Own more than 4 acres; rent out land and loan money to more
than 20% of farm value; rely on hired labor.

Methodalaggcal note: With a range of ownership between 0 and 8+ acres, and nearly
60% of farms falling under the mean of 1.5 acres, it is preferable to use the
median (1.15) as a dividing point between "poor" and "middle" cultivator categories

72

conditions. Large scale absentee ownership usually taken as synonymous with
"landlordism" has not been prevalent in East Pakistan since the Partition

of 1947, the exodus of Hindu zamindars, and the East Bengal State Acquisi-
tion and Tenancy Act of 1950.

If land ownership is taken as a major criterion, then, it can be hypo-
thesized that social relations among most heads of households in these vil-
lages are rather egalitarian in character. But this statement, while essen-
tially true in my observation, is an over-simplification. For, as Table 4
suggests, differences in actual economic activities - "what people do with
what they have" - have relevance for the understanding of basic distinctions
in status and power. From this step, then, I proceed to a larger discussion
of social stratification and its relationship to community organization in

Hajipur and Tinpara.

CHAPTER V

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION IN HAJIPUR AND TINPARA: CASTE OR CLASS?

In discussions of South Asian Muslim social stratification common ref-
erence is found to a broad division of status among the followers of the
Prophet: that of the Ashraf'or "noble," "high-born," and that of the Ajlaf

" "mean people,"

(synonym in Bengal, Atraf) or "low born," (literally "wretches,
according to Gait 1902). Among the Ashraf, four groups can be delimited.
The highest ranked of these are said to be the Sayads, claiming descent from
the lineage of the Prophet himself, and next in rank are the Sheikhs, who
putatively reckon descent from the Prophet's tribe, the Meccan Qureshi. Be-
low these and ranked in generally analogous status are those who calim descent
from the Mughals and the Pathans, among the most important of the foreign
iMuslims who brought Islam to India (see discussions in Nazmul Karim 1956:
128-142 and Vreede-de Stuers 1968: 3-27). It is generally stated that these
4 Ashraf groups constitute at least historically an intermarrying aristocracy,
albeit with internal status distinctions based on ranked kin groupings
(biradari) and effective marrying groups (bhiadari). Below the Ashraf, the
AjZaf'Muslims constitute a category of occupational groups within which status-
ranking also occurs, toward the lower end of which continuum evidence of rigid
group endogamy is said to be found.

The existence of caste in South Asian Muslim society has been discussed
by a number of writers, including British scholar-administrators who were fas-

cinated by its appearance and latter-day anthropologists who have found it in

their empirical field studies. Far West Pakistan, caste has been discussed

73

74

in the regions of the Northwest Frontier (Barth 1960) and the Punjab (Eglar
1958). Ansari (1956; 1959-60) has reported extensively on Muslim castes of
rural Uttar Pradesh (India). Guha (1965) and Mukherjee (1948) make brief
reference to caste among the Muslims of West Bengal. Nazmul Karim (1956)
presents an historical overview of Muslim social stratification in East
Pakistan and the field studies of Fazlur Rashid Khan (1962) and Nizam Uddin
Ahmed (1962) report on various "caste" groupings in Dacca District of that
province. Gait (1902), who directed and wrote the report for the Census of
India (Bengal) of 1901, made note of a plethora of titles and caste names
of groups reported in Bengal proper, 28 of which he stated to be endogenous
or "true castes." Most of these latter belonged to occupational groupings
and at least the most numerous of them, according to Gait, had "caste pan-
chayats" similar to those found among analoguous Hindu castes. All such
groupings fall within the AjZaf’category, and it may be that they stood, at
least historically, in relationship to the Ashraf groupings in a kind of
zamindar-kammi relationship as has been found, for example, in West Pakistan
(see, e.g., Eglar 1958).

The AshrafLAjZaf division, however, can only be taken as the broadest
of distinctions and, with variations and nuances in status distinction by
region and province, is not very helpful in understanding the empirical sit-
uation in each specific region where Muslims predominate in any measure
(Imtiaz Ahmed 1967). In most of the decennial censuses for which respondents
'were required to list membership "castes" or "tribes," the Muslims of Bengal
inost commonly recorded themselves as Shaikh, although variations in which
large numbers of them reported Sayad or Pathan status may be seen from decade
to decade and district to district. It is interesting to note that in the

Census of 1871-2, the vast majority of Muslims in Bengal reported neither

75

"caste" nor title; that is, on the census caste tables the category "un-
specified" remains consistently the largest for all districts. Unfortu-
nately, the director of the Census of 1881 devoted very little attention

to "caste" (he did not, apparently, feel that caste listing was an appro-
priate function of the census, but rather a matter to be relegated to mere
ethnographers), and so there are no listings for Muslim caste for that year.
iMore attention was devoted to the listing of both Hindu and Muslim caste in
the Census of 1801, although the data were not very detailed. Nonetheless,
the Census of 1891 does record a surprising phenomenon. Whereas the vast
'majority of Muslims in Bengal in 1872 did not return themselves as belong-
ing to any specific caste or title category, by 1891 this majority was re-
versed and 95 percent of those who responded to the part of the schedule
indicating caste and occupation reported themselves as Sheikhs. As Table

5 indicates, this situation was revealed again in 1901 and continued down
to 1931, the last census in which caste was recorded.

From the data presented in Table 5, it would appear that within a per-
iod of 20 to 30 years the Muslims of Bengal engaged in a massive shift in
self-definition, at least as far as status is concerned. This amounts to a
kind of "ashrafization" en masse, to use the term of Vreede-de Stuers, a
phenomenon similar to the process of sanskritization as Srinivas (see his
latest statement, 1968) and others have described and analyzed it. In fact,
the process among Muslims is noted in the census reports themselves. Accor-
ding to Beverly (1875: 191), the "four great Muhammedan tribes (sic: sayad,
.Pathan, Mughal and Shaikh) are but poorly represented." He nonetheless

"un—

asserted, despite the fact that in the census tables most Muslims were
specified," that "all Muhammedans in Bengal ... assume the title of Shaikh

(sic)." Even if Beverly's unsupported generalization is correct, it seems

76

TABLE 5

THE INCREASE IN REPORT OF SHEIKH IN BENGAL, FROM 1871 TO 1901

 

 

District 1871* 1901**
Unapecified Sheikh ’Other Sheikh Other
Burdwan 98.8 .8 .4 85.3 14.2
Bankura 99.4 .1 .5 91.4 8.6
Birbhum 98.2 .7 1.1 88.0 12.0
Midnapur 95.9 .3 1.1 67.7 32.3
Howrah 86.3 13.7
and 96.4 3.2 .4
Hooghly (listed together in 1871) 90.1 9.9
24 Parganas 92.8 6.1 1.1 63.1 36.9
Nadia 99.4 .2 .4 85.9 14.1
Jessore 98.9 .2 .9 88.9 11.1
Murshidabad 94. 2 5. 3 . 5 93. 7 6. 3
Dinajpur 99.9 .03 .07 98.8 1.2
Malda 98.8 .9 .3 94.4 5.6
omitted here for 1871 due to
Rajshahi inconsistent data in-census 95.0 5.0
Rangpur 99.9 0 .1 92.1 7.9
Bogra 99.9 0 .1 96.1 3.9
Pabna 96.5 2.4 1.1 87.7 12.3
Darjeeling 97.2 1.3 1.5 100.0 0.0
Jalpaiguri 99.9 .01 .09 71.2 28.8
Dacca 97.6 1.3 1.1 94.4 5.6
Faridpur 97.9 .9 1.2 92.9 7.1
Bakerganj 95.8 3.9 .3 97.2 2.8
Khulna not listed separately in 1871 46.3 56.4
Mymensingh 99.6 .2 .2 95.5 4.5

 

77

TABLE 5 (continued)

 

 

District 1871* in % 1901**

- Unspecified Sheikh Other Sheikh Other
Chittagong 99.9 .02 .08 98.6 1.4
Noakhali 99.9 .06 .04 99.5 .5
Tippera 99.6 .3 .1 99.6 .4

 

*Census of Bengal, 1872, General Statement V.B., Statement on Nationalities,
Race, Tribes and Castes, pp. cxxiv-cxxv.

**Census of India, 1901, Volume VI, The Lower Provinces of Bengal and their
Feudatories, Part III, Provincial Tables, Table 111, pp. 62-123.

Notes:

Sylhet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts are excluded in both listings here.

For 1871, "other" includes Pathan, Mughal, Sayad and Joloha (weaver caste)
only. Nadia, Dinajpur, Rangpur and Bogra Districts all reported greater
numbers of Pathans and Sayads than Sheikhs. Significant numbers of Jolohas
were also found in these districts, as were they in Decca and Faridpur Dis-
tricts as well.. But virtually none of these titles of castes were found in
either Tippera or Noakhali.

For 1901, the caste listings by district are far more complete, although

they are not discussed here. Although there is a fair degree of variation
from district to district, the dominance of Sheikhs throughout Bengal Proper
is marked indeed.

Summary totals for the censuses reported are:

1871 - all Bengal (including Sylhet and Hill Tracts,
excluding Cachar): Unspecified 98.1%; all other 1.9%.

1901 - all Bengal (including Hill Tracts): Sheikhs
88l9%; all others 11.1%.

Sheikhs: mean - 88.9%
median = 92.5% -
mode - no real modal clustering
range - 46.3 - 100.0%
for all districts.

78

clear that in 1871 there was little concern among the majority of Muslims
that their claim to Sheikh status be duly recorded. As noted, the Census
of 1881 made no listing of Muslim "castes." By 1891, however, O'Donnell
(p. 268) could report that "The great majority (of Muslims) made use of
(the caste) column to return their titles or occupation..." which fact in-
dicates a growth of interest among Muslims in recording some indication of
high status. By 1901, the tendency of Bengali Muslims to prefer the title
Sheikh was noted by Gait (1902 VI: 442) who wrote that "... the amorphous
ranks of the Shekh not only include large crowds of converts from Hinduism,
but also many Jolahas (weavers) and others who had a strong objection to
being returned under their functional designations and claimed to be en-
tered under this head." In 1921, Thompson (1923: 349) reported increasing
political opposition to the recording of status distinctions among Muslims,
the "distinction between section and section being gradually looser than
among Hindus ..." And finally, in 1931, Porter (1933 V, Part I: 422-423)
annoyedly reported the political opposition of the Muslims to the recording
of "any sectional distinctions whatever" on religious grounds. He went on
to discuss the existence of Muslim caste at some length, however, but did
report that large numbers refused to claim any title than that of "Mbmin,"
or "believer."

I am not prepared at this juncture to offer much in the way of explana-
tion of this "ashrafization" phenomenon. If there is any truth in Beverly's
assertion (supra) that Bengali Muslims had always regarded themselves as
Sheikhs, then one must explain why they seemed unconcerned that this "fact"
be recorded in the Census of 1871, one the one hand, and, on the other, why
they insisted with such remarkable unanimity only 20 years later that it be

recorded. Part of the answer may lie in the actual procedures for collecting

79

the census data, which are known to have varied from decade to decade, as well
as the interest of the particular census director in each case. And surely
much of the answer must be related to the growing concern with sanskritiza-
tion evident among Hindus during the late 19th Century and well in into the
20th Century. For if, indeed, Hindu cultivating castes were demanding that
their caste titles be recorded in more acceptable ways, it would not be sur-
prising to see this idea rapidly diffused among Muslims. Thus if Haliya
Kaibarttas could demand to be called Mahisyas, if Pods could insist that

they were Paundra Kshatriyas, and if even the lowly ChandaZs could remonstrate
over their claim to be known as Namasudras, then surely common Muslim culti-
vators would be somehow similarly justified in calling themselves Sheikh,
whether their claim of "tribal" affiliation to the Qureshi could be substan-
tiated or not. Thus Gait (1902) distinguished between "true" Sheikhs and "cul-
tivating" Sheikhs, between which groups, he noted, there existed little in the
way of mutual exclusiveness as far as marriage, commensality, and other aspects
of social relations were concerned. Finally, I suggest that the process of
"ashrafization," as that of sanskritization, is no doubt related to general
political trends of the period. It is well known that for much of the history
of Bengal after the coming of Islam, in the rural areas there existed a great
deal of cultural syncretism and social integration between the Hindu and Mus-
lim communities. Usually, as is still the case in West Bengal, Muslims con-
stituted a distinct "caste" within the ranking hierarchy of any given village,
usually low ranked or "exterior" in status. With the rise of Muslim "nationa-
list" consciousness in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, it seems reason-
able to view the "ashrafization" process as part of a total movement which
emphasized the cultural, religious, social and political distinctness of Mus-

lims from their Hindu compatriots.

80

These comments are meant merely to be suggestive as an approach to
the eXplanation of the "ashrafization" phenomenon, which must be sought by.
further‘research. For, whatever the reasons which may have impelled them to
do so, the fact that most Bengali Muslims have long claimed the title of
Sheikh is not, superficially at least, of much utility in understanding
ZMuslim.social stratification in rural East Bengal. Indeed, if all are

Sheikh, does it follow that within the fold of the Sheikhs there are, as is

said of Islam itself, "no genealogies,‘ no distinctions? This seems unlike-

ly. Nonetheless, the nearly universal claim to Sheikh status provides a
beginning point for a more complicated, but perhaps more fruitful, discus-
sion.

Earlier reference has been made to the hypothesis advanced by Nicholas
to the effect that the historical development of social organization in
rural Bengal may best be viewed as the evolution of a "frontier society."
In a recent paper, Nicholas (1969) summarizes the "frontier hypothesis" in
an attempt to account for the remarkable "ethnic homogeneity" of the active
delta.

The most frontier-like portions of the delta are simplest in their
caste.composition. In the areas of the deepest annual floods and
the richest soils, single castes tend to predominate over large
expanses of territory. Members of the caste-like group of Muslim
agriculturalists, often known as Sekhs, predominate in all the
rural districts of East Bengal. The Hindu pioneers of the delta
are primarily Mahisya, Pod and Namasfidra. ... The Sekhs, Mahisyas,
Pods and Namasudras constitute the great bulk of the population of
undivided Bengal. Their techniques as housebuildere, boatmen, fish-
ermen and "deep water" cultivators are precisely adapted to the re-
quirements of life in the delta.

These groups have non-Aryan origins; perhaps they are indigenous to
Bengal; ... No records suggest that they were ever elaborately divi-
ded into specialized caste groups. ... Superimposed over the rela-
tively simple and unstratified society of delta pioneers is a hetero-
geneous "foreign" aristocracy, holding ideas about both religion and
society that are quite different from those of ordinary villagers.
(Nicholas 1969: 36-37).

81

Thus in the active delta districts of West Bengal it is common to find
inelaborately stratified villages, containing no more than 7 or 8 castes in
tote, with, for example, Mhhisya cultivators as the "dominant caste," often
comprising as much as 75 percent of the papulation. The same processes of
migration and settlement seem to have occurred in East Bengal. The earliest
inhabitants of the southern districts of what is now East Pakistan most
probably were the ancestors of the Namasudra cultivators, to which group an
older generation of British scholar-administrators like to refer, in what
seems scandalously archaic language today, as the "great race casts" of
Eastern Bengal. In the light of what little we know about the spread of
Islam in Bengal, it-seems reasonable to suppose that many of the converts
to Islam in rural areas were most probably Namasudras, whose status in
Bengali Hindu society was always humble (even today their most common name,
chandal, is mouthed with a certain derision by those Hindus of supposed gent-
ler birth). Despite centuries of gradual conversion, well into the 19th
Century there persisted nonetheless a certain religious syncretism in the
practice of both Hinduism and Islam in rural Bengal, noted for its emotive
and substantive similarities even at points where formal theological doctrine
otherwise most radically diverges (see Nicholas 1969). Evidence of this
syncretism, reflective of a certain cultural and ethnic homogeneity, still
impresses the foreign observer familiar with "both” post-1947 Bengals. It
can thus be suggested that, much as the Mhhisyas, Namasudras and Pods "dom-
inate" in the active delta districts of West Bengal, so does a "dominant
caste" of Muslim."Shsikhs" hold sway in the counterpart areas of East Pakis-

18

tan. Villages like Hajipur and Tinpara are typical of this pattern.

Rural Camilla thana is°dominated numerically by Muslim peasantry, withv

few Muslims performing those traditional service occupations.which among Hindus

82

are associated with varying degrees of low status and ritual pollution. Most
males above the age of 15 in both villages report farming as a major occu-
pation, with half of these also engaged in other tasks for supplementary in-
come - as workers in factories of the town, as salaried service holders
(usually menial, but not in all cases), in trade or as manual laborers of
some sort. Three are teachers, 4 are imams and among the Hindus of the wash-
erman, barber and carpenter castes most practice their traditional occupation
to some extent. In neither Hajipur nor Tinpara and their neighboring com-
'munities are there any Muslims engaged in the tasks of barbers, washerman,

or leather workers, for example, but there are both Hindu and Muslim groups
in the thana area whose members do perform these functions. In short, what
exists of occupational differentiation historically associated with caste

is in part tied to the continued presence of middle and low ranked Hindu
serving castes, which may be one of the reasons why many of these tasks are
not as yet widely performed by Muslims. But, while this is the case, my
village informants were aware that elsewhere, in the town and in certain vil-
lages in the thana, there were also some Muslims who in fact perform these
tasks. In the interviews I conducted on this subject I was able consistently
to elicit reference to certain Muslim groups whose members carry on occupa-
tions associated in some sense with low status and thought to be "defiling."
These references were most often to Muslims who were washermen, barbers and
sweepers (local Hindu sweeper castes in Camilla town are collectively sub-
sumed under the name of methar, which name is sometimes applied to Muslims
performing this task). More interestingly, groups that perform specifically
Muslim services were mentioned in this "caste" category: the butchers (khasai),
who visit Alirbazar once a week, but who live in Camilla town, and the hajjams
who perform ritual circumcision, enjoined upon all Muslim males. The hajjams,

none of whom live in or around Hajipur and Tinpara, come through them "on

83

tour,"

as it were, from others parts of the thana during the winter months
‘when their services are most in demand. They are referred to as "a caste"
(ekpa jdt), into whose families no Muslim cultivator would marry ("tader
Race keho biye dibe nu").

In short, it can be said that Hajipur and Tinpara contain social'stra-
tification patterns broadly consistent with predominantly Hindu "pioneer"
active delta villages in West Bengal. They are composed of a "dominant
caste" of Muslim cultivators, whose need for non-cultivating services is
fulfilled either by resident Hindu serving castes19 or by non-resident Hindu
.and'Muslim groups, among whom the Muslims are thought of in "caste" terms.
It would have been useful to be able to test the statements of villagers to

which I have referred regarding "caste ideology,‘ against the reality of a
differentiated occupational structure in a Muslim village. Why no such vil-
lage could be found in the research area is at least hypothetically explained
by the "frontier hypothesis." But despite the lack of elaborate caste strati-
fication in the area, it can be said that "caste ideology" exists - "jati
thinking," as Gould (1969) has recently put it in a reassessment of the caste
concept and its utility.

It may thus be said that in this part of East Pakistan, the Sheikhs may

' whose relations with certain non-Sheikh

be seen as a kind of "dominant caste,‘
groups are minimal, except for locally resident Hindu serving castes. These
relations are, moreover, usually functionally specific, interaction occurring
for very utilitarian purposes. Finally, relations between the Sheikhs and en-
dogamous "Ajlaf" occupational groups are couched in terms of "caste" ideology
or "jati thinking." But this conception, while historically important and

ethnographically interesting, does not bring a student of rural Bengal Muslim

society to a full understanding of crucial aspects of its organization,

...\ .... ..x

M

 

84

particularly that aspect relating to the distribution of power and status.
An analysis of class relations - as distinct from those of caste - is far

more'important.

Class relations in Hajipur and Tinpara

It is useful to think of class primarily as an economic group, follow-
ing Marx and Weber. The relationship of differing groups to the means of
production, as well as their differential access to goods and services, pro—
vides the link between economy and society. At the same time, it is neces-
sary to distinguish conceptually the notion of status, defined by Weber as
"every typical component in the life fate of men that is determined by a
specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor" (Gerth and Mills
1958: 186-187). Class and status are, of course, related, although the spe-
cific manifestation of one or the other may not be correlated in all given
situations. As Weber has put it, however:

...: class distinctions are linked in the most varied ways with

status distinctions. Property as such is not always recognized

as a status qualification, but in the long run it is, and with

extraordinary regularity. (Gerth and Mills 1958: 187)

It is possible to identify both class and status groups in Villages Haji-
pur and Tinpara. Table 4 (supra) presents a rough classification of reason-
ably distinct economic groups, with reference to land ownership and sources
of income, which may be broadly seen to represent the existence of 3 "classes:"
those of rich, middle and poor peasantry, in Maoist terminology. It is also
possible to link these classes to differences in status and power in Hajipur
and Tinpara.

It is common in these villages and in Camilla thana generally for both
lineages and homesteads to have titles or names. The origins of these are

quite diverse, as I shall demonstrate, and there are differences in the signi-

ficance of one title or name as opposed to another. Lineage titles denoting

85

high status in often function as patronymics whereas other titles do not.
In this sense they contradict the more usual situation, which corresponds to
the hadith often cited in support of Islamic egalitarianism: "There are no
genealogies in Islam" (see the discussion in Levy 1957: Chapter 1). That is,
a man born into a family with the title of Majumdar will retain that title
as a patronymic, whereas a man born into an untitled family will be known
simply as, for example, Abdur Rahman, son of Jainal Abedin, Village X, Thana
X, etc.

There are 4 kinds of names or titles commonly associated with lineages
and homesteads in Hajipur and Tinpara. Among these two kinds are what may
be called "traditionally high status" titles or names associated with a)
landed aristocracy, positions in the revenue collection system of pre-Inde-
pendence times or in government administration and b) religion. Among these
are to be found lineage titles which function as patronymics, although not
all have this characteristic. The two remaining kinds of titles - or, bet-
ter put, names or common appelations - some are associated with c) occupation,
in a service or artisan capacity, others with d) personal characteristics of
a given member or members of the family remembered for some reason. The lat-
ter are not patronymics, but merely localisms by which nieghboring families in
the villages have come to call a given homestead. In Camilla thana the fol-

lowing examples of these names and titles were found.

A) Traditional high status, secular

Majumdar: according to Sinha (1962: 39), majumdars were the keepers of
the records of land transfers in the Mughal revenue system; the title
was apparently also often conferred on local holders of revenue collec-
tion rights by the Mughal aristocracy, be they Hindus or Muslims; thus
historically associated with ownership and control of land (jam, Persian;
jami, Bengali; land); a patronymic.

86

Cowdhuri: according to Webster (1910: 82ff) a title (of Persian
derivation) conferred by Mughal rulers on the managers of estates,
either Hindu or Muslim; also historically associated with owner-
ship or control of land; a patronymic.

Bhuiya: apparently derived from Sanskrit bhumi, meaning "earth,
ground" (bhui, bhui in Bengali); also associated historically with.
land ownership and landed aristocracy, especially with the famous
"bare bhuiya" or "12 Bhuiya families" of pro-Mughal and early Mughal
times in°Bengal (see Wise 1874); a patronymic.

'Mahiéan: from the Bengali mahié, meaning specifically "water buf-
falo," not historically a title granted in associated with land own-
ership or revenue so far as I know; but associated with the owner-
ship of a lot of land in that its bearers claim historically to
have been cattle traders, a profession which requires large amounts
of grazing land, as well as trading capital; a patronymic.

Kaji: from the Arabic, qadi, the title of an ecclesiastical judge,
among whose important functions were and still are important in the
registration of marriages and divorce; a patronymic, usually prece-
ding its bearer's given name; most commonly pronounced kazi.

Mandi, Kerani, Muhuri: all terms for "clerk" or, especially the
latter, "deed-writer;" these positions were historically associated
with the administration of revenue collection; they may be, but are
not always, patronymics.

B) Traditional high status, religious

 

Khbndakar: from the Persian khawandgar, "circumcisor of Muslim
boys;" according to Wise (1903: 28-29) a priestly class which func-
tioned importantly in the spreading of Islam in Bengal; the title
is for this reason, apparently, high status, despite the Persian
meaning of its origin which, as I have noted earlier, refers to an
occupation which is considered "defiling" (that of the hajjams);
present day bearers of this title may or may not be religious lead-
ers; a patronymic.

Haji: a title borne by one who has performed the religious duty
of pilgrimage or Hajj; not a patronymic.

Mbwlana: a religious leader of usually greater training than that
of a more common imam, maZZa, or mowZabi, all of whom are allowed
to lead mosque prayers; a certain degree of scholarship is attribu-
ted to mauZanas, who are recognized as authorities on religious

and certain legal matters; tends to be religiously prestigious.

Pharaji: commonly spelled Faraizi or Fara'idi, especially with
reference to the important Islamic revivalistic and social movement
of the 19th Century in Bengal (see M.A. Khan 1965); the term ap-
pears to be derived from the Arabic fhrd, which refers to a category
of "moral acts" which are encumbent upon and essential duties for
Muslims; perhaps because it reflects special piety and orthodoxy,

87

it appears to connote a high degree of respectability for its‘bear-
ers; it is not a personal name, but usually attached to a homestead
(e.g., Faraizi Bari).

C) Occupational titles, secular and religious, but not of especially
high status: some examples

Imam, MhZZfi, Mbwlabi: local circles, religious congregational lead-
ers, with sufficient training to be accepted by the Faithful as
leaders in limited capacities; conveys honorable, but not especially
high, status.

Kabiraj: "native doctor;" either of persons or animals.

Kathmistri: wood worker, carpenter (as distinct from the Hindu caste
carpenter).

D) Names of homesteads denoting personal characteristics: examples

Mal: Bengali meaning "strength, force, high value;" One homestead in

Hajipur is sometimes called MhZ Bari because of the forceful character

of the (now deceased) head of its resident lineage.

Pfigali: from the Bengali pagaZ or "mad;" This name attaches to a

particular homestead in Village Reshampur, near my study area, where

there formerly lived a widow who is reputed to have vigorously resis-
ted all attempts to deprive her of her land by inheritance. The con-
stant battles and litigatians in which she is said to have been en-

gaged earned for her the title of "pagali" or "madwaman" (itself a

commentary on the status of women in rural Bengali Muslim society).

The homestead in which her descendants live became known thus as

Pagali Bari, or "Home of the Madwoman," a source of amused embarrass-

ment to its current inhabitants.

Ordinary villagers in Hajipur and Tinpara, when asked to identify with
respect to status either their own or other families with which they may be
associated in marriage, will refer to these kinds of appelations if they are
relevant. This is the phenomenon I encountered when making a census and re-
cording genealogies, which surprised me because I had expected that when so
queried people would respond with the term Sheikh or other such Ashraf (or
AjZaf) titles. Not all lineages or homesteads have names or titles, how-
ever, and when asked to identify these in any way which denotes status,

usually informants said that the pe0ple in question were simply "grihasthi,"

a term whose local dialectal pronunciation given here is probably related to

88

the Sanskrit grihastha, which refers to the "householder" stage of the tra-
ditional Hindu Four "Stages of Life." By this it appeared to mean that the

person or family in question was merely a "common villager,’ someone "just

like anyone else."20

My concern with names and titles is not merely ethnographic, for an
awareness of the differences in status they connote facilitates an understand-
ing of social stratification in Hajipur and Tinpara, where status, in the
Weberian sense, is often empirically distinct from class as an economic group-
ing. Villagers themselves discriminate between ucho-bangsho (high status lin-
eage), madhya-bangsho (middle status lineage) and nichu-bangsho (low status
lineage) families and appear to do so on the basis of a title, or its lack, as
'much as anything else. This appears to be common in other parts of East
Bengal as well, as Glasse (1967) shows for Matlab Bazar in Camilla District,
where villagers also are disposed to rank titles in this manner.

Not all those in Hajipur and Tinpara with traditionally high status titles,
either secular or religious, are particularly wealthy. This is the case partly
because of the considerable differences in land holding which obtain within the
same homestead. The homestead is the residential locus of a patrilineally ex-
tended family, with which may also be living matrilateral kinsmen and even fam-
ilies of non-kinsmen or affines. The homestead is further broken down into in-
dividual economic segments or families which may be either sub-nuclear, nuclear
or join; these are known as chula ("hearth," "oven") or, less commonly, khana
("eating groups") and represent either sub-lineal segments of the patrilineage
or matrilateral and unrelated coreeidents. Ownership of land is not based on a
corporate lineage principle and each sub-unit represents an economically sep-
arate group. These chulas or households have been represented in Tables 3 and 4

as "farms," indicating their separateness as individual producing units (see

the more extensive discussion of kinship and residence in Chapter 6 and

89

.Appendix 11). Thus, within each homestead there may be found marked differ-
ences in sizes of land holdings (taken here as the chief indicator of wealth),
even though most male members of a given homestead are agnatically related.
Membership in the same lineage, however, means that if the patrilineal group
has a high status title, which is also its patronymic in some cases, it will
be shared by all the agnates in the group. Thus, for example, members of
Hajipur's Majumdar family display a range of land ownership obeetween com-
plete landlessness and 8.00 acres, its individual cthas encompassing every
economic class of peasants, as I have used the term above and in.'Table 4,
from "landless" to "rich creditor," yet all the agnatically related males in
that family still have the name Majumdar.

Of the traditionally high status religious and secular titles I have dis-
cussed above, there are to be found in Hajipur and Tinpara the following: 2
lineages of Majumdars, 2 of Khondakars, and 1 each of Mahisan, Munshi, Farizi
and Haji. All other homesteads and lineages in both villages have either occu-
pational titles or personal appellations which do not denote particularly high
status or are simply without distinct name or title of any sort ("grihasthi").

In Tables 6a and 6b, individual farms are compared on the basis of econom-
ic class (as in Table 4) and status. Of the 102 family farms in Hajipur and
Tinpara, 35 constitute those of individuals and groups with traditionally high
status titles. In Table 6a, the numerical majority of these fall within the
"middle peasant" class, but when these are compared on a percentage basis by
economic category, possession of high status titles is very unequally distribu-
ted in the sample, the highest proportion being found in the category of the
"rich peasant." Table 6b compares high status with other lineages an the ba-
sis of number of farms in each economic category or class. It will be seen

that among the high status lineages over 25 percent fall into the class of

CLASS AND STATUS

90

TABLE 6

IN HAJIPUR AND TINPARA I

 

 

 

 

 

class N % title N total %pgr class
Majumdar 3
Mahisan 3
Rich 9 8.8 Munshi 2 9 100.00
(4 acres+) Haji -
Faraizi l
Khondakar -
Majumdar 3
Mahisan 7
Middle 48 47.1 Munshi 2 17 35.4
(1.15-3.99 Haji 1
acres) Faraizi l
Khondakar 3
Majumdar 6
Mahisan 1
Poor 45 44.1 Munshi - 9 20.0
(landless- Haji -
1.15 acres) Faraizi 1
Khondakar 2
Totals 102 100.0 35 34.3*
*34.3 percent of 102 families are those of individuals with high
status titles.
TABLE 7
CLASS AND STATUS IN HAJIPUR AND TINPARA II
High status Non-high status
N % %
Rich 9 25.7 0.0
Middle 17 48.6 46.3
Poor 9 25.7 53.7
Totals 35 100.0 100.00

91

"rich peasants,"

while among the non-high status lineages, none are in this
class. Bath high and non-high status lineage have approximately the same
number in the "middle peasant" class, but the number of non-high status
"poor peasants" is more than double that of the high status families in
this class.

These data suggest that in the "middle peasant"category, there is a
broad overlap between "class" as an economically conceived phenomenon and
"status." But the extremes of the "rich-poor" continuum reflect general
correlations of rank between the two, in that all the "rich" families are
imembers of high status lineages and comparatively few (20 percent) of the
land poor and landless families are of high status lineages. This fact bears
out Weber's dictum that although propoerty and status do not always coincide
they tend to do so in the long run "with extraordinary regularity."

Classes in any society evince differential patterns of behavior, are
characterized by unequally distributed access to goods and services and, as
exemplified by marriage patterns, may be seen to unite families along hori-
zontally stratified lines. With respect to all of these characteristics,
some differences can be perceived in Hajipur and Tinpara along the class
lines I have attempted to delineate.

Table 4 indicates differences in the distribution of control over pro-
ductive resources which is taken as the basis for class idfferentiation. It
will be obvious that 'hiddle" and "rich" peasants most often lend money and
goods while the "poor" peasants are invariably only debtors. Because, how-
ever, the lending of money is so constant and uniquitous a feature of social
and economic activities in these villages, it is difficult to say unequivocally
that the "exploitation" implied in them is the unique province of any one

class. As Table 4 suggests, a large number of "middle peasants" depend on

92

money and land lending to provide a substantial portion of their income, which
some "rich peasants" do not. The ability to engage in money lending or the
renting out of land is, however, clearly related to the possession of at

least the median amount of land.21 Moreover, what I could learn of the indi-
vidual case histories of "rich peasants" not involved in lending at the time
of my research indicated that they had done so in the recent past.

With respect to non-economic differences among the groups, relatively
high status and the ability to maintain it also is differientiated along class
lines. Larger homesteads and houses (ghar) of better construction are more
common among "rich peasants" than others. A common indicator of relative
'wealth could be seen in the fact that the more fortunate cultivators had suf-
ficient land to have a pond within the homestead where members of the home-
stead could bathe in private. "Rich peasants" often entertain visitors in
a separate building maintained by the lineage for the reception of guests,
known as kachari ghar. These symbols of relative affluence are especially im-
portant in the maintenance of what Weber called "status honor." Indeed, the
Muslim term and concept of izzat - personal or group prestige or honor - is a
‘manifestation of Weber's notion par excellence. In no way is the izzat of a
family better evidenced than in its ability to maintain the "privacy" of its
women and to entertain guests in a manner consistent with both the norms of
purdah as well as of genteel hospitality. The poorer families, whose women
must bathe in the ponds of others near the cultivation fields, unhidden from
public view, and must hide behind screens in houses when guests are entertained
for lack of a kaohari ghar, must constantly be reminded thereby of their low
status. It was my own properly Koranic experience "never to look upon" the
wives and mature daughters of my more wealthy village acquaintances, although
over time I came to know the men well. But in the homes of the poorer villag-

ers, less precaution was taken to ensure that my presence would not "embarrass"

1.

-.-

.-

_,

....

"u-

u‘u

“

., .‘

AH

‘.

 

 

 

u
n

ll u

 

 

 

93

the ladies of the house and in several cases I was able to banter with women
while they worked in their compounds; even in these houses, however, such occa-
sions were rare. Thus, in Hajipur and Tinpara, general differences in’wealth
and status overlap with distinctions in behavior and access to the goods and
services which facilitate the maintenance of "status honor."

Status distinctions may also be seen in the pattern of marriage allian-
ces. From the earliest point in my research I was interested in the degree
to which class or "caste" lines, once defined, would correspond to marriage
patterns. At a number of points, I discussed the matter with villagers and
was most often told, with varying tones of insistence, that economic consider—
ations were of the greatest import in the selection of spouses. Thus, for ex-
ample, I was told that in an earlier day, the Chaudhuris, Bhuiyas and Majumdars,
and their equals, tended preferentially to intermarry, but that this was no
longer the case. As one informant put it: "Nowadays if one's economic posi-
tion is good, one's lineage status is also good" (ajkal gader abastha bhalo,
tader bangéo 5 bhEZo).

This statement seems to ring true in no small measure. The most important
consideration in the selection of husbands for daughters seems to lie in the
economic well-being and social status of the potential husbands' families. It
was often touchingly put to me that a father wanted above all for his daughter

to be married into a family where she would "be happy.‘ By this seemed to be
meant her marriage into a lineage whose members were economically secure en-
ough that ayoung wife would not have to perform more than the normal domestic
duties. In some of the more wealthy families, domestic servants are often em-
ployed, for example. Conversely, the wives of the poorer families must not

only contend with the tasks of their own husbands' homesteads, but also are

often sent to work as domestic help or "hired labor" during harvest seasons in

94

the homesteads of the more wealthy, as I have pointed out above.‘ I have
also noted that it is a matter of "status honor" for those who can“afford
it to provide adequately for the observance of purdeh. Thus, in the*selec-
tion of a prospective husband, it is a matter of some import that there be

' or‘"sense

minimal risk that the bride's Zajja ("modesty," "natural shyness,‘
of shame") will be offended. Finally, concern for the girl's relations with
the women in her "father-in-law's house" is a further element in attempting

to assure for her a "happy" married life. For, as is common in South Asia,

a young bride's relations with her husband's elder brothers' wives and,

above all, with her mother-in-law, may be tense. For this reason, a percep-
tive informant once told me, families in which many divorces are known to

have occurred are often avoided as sources of marriage partners; frequency of
divorce is taken as a sign of a family where men are inordinately demanding
and mean or with whose women it is difficult to get along.

The families of girls being considered as brides are also investigated to
ascertain locally their economic situation and status. In this connection,
local sardars are often consulted as independent checks, if a bride is sought
far from home. In addition to the economic well-being and status of the fam-
ily, some personal considerations are operative. It seems to be a matter of
some concern that the girl in question be properly "religious," that is, that
she can and regularly does "read" the Koran during the appropriate prayer per-
iods (i.e., in most cases this amounts to her reciting what she can remember
of the appropriate prayers). For this reason, I add parenthetically, it is
common to find more girls present in madrassas than in public schools, since
from the point of view of the family who must find her the best possible match,
it is more important that a girl be familiar with the formal niceties of reli-

gious observance than with simple mathematics or the Bengali alphabet (although

95

in families where the sons have attained a significantly higher average of
education, it is common to seek a bridge who is to some extent literate).
Finally, as village men will regularly attest at least, it is desirable
that a girl be reasonably good looking (or, in terms of cultural standards,
"fair-skinned").22

In Hajipur and Tinpara the choices of marital alliances tend to exhibit
a certain endogamy along the lines of the status groups I have delimited.
Genealogical data from 31 patrilineages, including those in the 23 home-
steads which comprise the villages, reflect this fact. 0f the 31, 14 bore
traditionally high status titles and 17 did not. A count of all marriages
recorded in these genealogies for which data on lineage status was obtained
shows that the titled lineages married into others of like status at an av-
erage rate of 42.3 percent of their total marriages. By contrast, non-titled
grihasthi genealogies show evidence of marriage into titled lineages and
homesteads at an average rate of 13.4 percent of their total recorded mar-
riages. Thus, the tendency for titled lineages to intermarry was over three
times the rate of grihasthi lineages to marry into them.

These data point to a certain independence of status from class taken as
a purely economic category. Status would appear to be as much a consideration
as economic well-being, even where the two do not coincide. Thus, a titled
lineage can obtain desirable marriage partners for its sons and daughters even
if its economic situation (abastha) is comparatively modest. This is parti-
cularly the case if the basis of its own status is religious. For example,
the family of Haji's in Hajipur has a marriage rate of 44.4 percent with other
families bearing both secular and religious titles, despite that the Haji
family is only of "middle peasant" economic status. At the same time, how-

ever, it should further be pointed out that while within a given lineage the

96

individual families (etha) may vary greatly with respect to economic well—
being, where there is a titled lineage among whose individual families can
be found one or more rich cultivators, it is this family which has predomi-
nance within-the lineage and maintenance of status honor falls largely-the
shoulders of its members. As Table 6a indicates, all rich peasants in Haji-
pur and Tinpara are members of titled lineages. Thus, a "middle peasant"
family of a titled lineage has the advantage of status which is "paid for"
in the long run by the fortunes of the lineage as a whole, in particular the
more wealthy segments of it. The role of the rich peasant in.maintaining
status honor will be discussed more fully below.

In this sense, the statements of villagers are partly refelctive of the
reality of economic well-being as the major consideration in marriage choice.
But the extent at which status alone is a consideration is also demonstrated
by an analysis of actual marriages over time, as is possible with genealogi-
cal data. Thus, only indirectly can it be maintained that "those whose eco-
nomic situation is.good also have good lineage status."

At the same time, the data reflect a certain openness in social strati-
fication, as far as status is concerned, in that even among titled lineages
the absolute majority of marriages are with non-titled lineages. In short,
mobility between high status and non-high status groups is clearly evident.

A high degree of mobility of individual families between economic classes
and status groups is an important feature of social stratification in Hajipur
and Tinpara and probably has been so for a long time. It should not be for-
gotten that the economy of these villages is one of general scarcity, given
population size and density and the vicissitudes of agriculture in a monsoon
climate, as I have earlier stressed. Under these conditions, it is unlikely

that a lineage can maintain superior wealth over a long period of time without

97

some difficulty. This is partly the case because ownership of property is in-
dividual, not corporate or communal. Inheritance is partible and stresses
equal division among males, with a certain proportion of the patrimony
legally designated for females in shares which, while in total disproportion-
ate to that given to males, are also equally divided among women whO‘inherit.
Thus, over time, unless land is consistently accumulated, a given lineage
taken collectively, becomes vulnerable to the inexorable problems of agricul-
ture in a monsoon climate, in that as its propoerty is progressively divided
into smaller and smaller shares, the size of individual holdings diminishes
and renders individual members of the lineage each less capable of maintain-
ing large enough amounts of land to ensure adequate production, given the
vagaries of the monsoons. Hence, over time, unless accumulation of land is
kept up, a lineage's collective wealth stands to be dissipated. At the same
time, other families, of "middle peasant" status, may be rising, especially
if they are able successfully to engage in lending activities, in particular
the taking of land in mortgage, over a given period of time. Thus, there
appears to occur a regular rise and fall of families, the decline of wealth
(and hence power) for some and the increase of those for others, in‘a process
which probably evinces a three or four generation periodicity.

The assignment of status seems to follow the rise and fall of various
families in this respect. Villagers in Hajipur and Tinpara are quick to dis-
tinguish between long-standing and recently acquired titles. For example.
they will readily inform one of which families, among, say, the local
Majumdars, are the "real," "original" (ashoZ) Majumdars, who gained the title
"legitimately" in the past for performance of the requisite services, and
which of them are merely "so-called" (dak) Majumdars, in those cases where

the title has merely been adopted by rural upstart parvenus. Similarly,

98

members of poor peasant families will sometimes claim to have enjoyed the
status of a secular title in past generations, but will end their tale of
woe stating that they can no longer claim it. One is reminded, in short,
of the proverb common to Muslims everywhere in the Sub-continent whick
states: "Last year I was a onaha (weaver, of Ajlaf status), this year I
have vecome a Sheikh, and if next year's crops are good, I shall be a

Sayad." Some examples of this phenomenon may readily be cited.

Example 9: The Hajipur Mahisans

The Mahisan lineage of Hajipur is the largest in population and land
ownership. Its members number over 50 and own collectively about one
third of Hajipur villagers' total land holdings. Within the lineage
most individual chulas are those of "middle peasants," only one fam-
ily being truly poor. It is a sarddri lineage, although the sardhr
himself, Gada Mia, a "rich creditor peasant" with 4 acres of land

and over an acre held in mortgage, is not the richest.man. His cous-
in, Anwar Ali, holding over 8 acres outright and another 1.60 acres
in mortgage is the wealthiest and best known money lender in the
Alribazar area.

The lineage is one of the oldest in Hajipur and Tinpara and it appears
that over time they have grown to considerable prominence in local
affairs. The Mahisans originally engaged in the cattle trade, to
which fact their name attests, and several of their memebers still
carry on this occupation today, although in a smaller scale than did
previous generations.

Anwar Ali is not only a large land holder and money lender, but also
has obtained the rights to run the sole government ration shop in.
Alirbazar, which returns him an acceptable, if modest, profit. Be-
cause of his large holdings, he can afford to hoard rice to a period
well beyond the harvest time and thus obtain maximum prices for it
during the "lean months" of the year. His sons are often seen sel-
ling his stocks in small amounts during the Fall and Winter on mar-
ket days in Alirbazar. In November of 1967 I once sat next to his
grandson in the market while that latter sold 10 Beers of the previ-
ous year's crop. The young man, a high school graduate with some
knowledge of English, casually told me that the family still had 60
maunds of the previous year's amon season alone and had harvested re-
cently 250 maunds, of which they had sold or kept for consumption 110
maunds. They would, he said, be sure to keep a certain amount for
sale during "the crisis period" of Jaista and Kartik months, late sumr
mer and early fall.

The Mahisans are the truly dominant lineage of Hajipur. Collective
activities in the village center around their lineage. They have

99

constructed a cement platform for prayers near a pond on the outskirts
of their homestead and during certain religious holidays in which
villagers gather collectively to celebrate and perform prayer,‘it is

at this spot (see discussion in more detail below). During my stay

the leadership of a newly formed village cooperative society under the
aegis of the Pakistan Academy for Rural DevelOpment came to be lodged
with members of the Mahisan lineage. All of these activities”cross
reyai lines, and are part of the reason that Hajipur is a multi-reyai
village. Though there is some vying for influence between the Mahisans
and the other 2 sardari lineages in Hajipur, the Mahisans were constant-
ly central to life in the village throughout my stay there and had pro-
bably been so for years before then.

Example 10: The Hajipur Munshis

The leadership of Hajipur's Reyai II is in the hands of the Munshi Bari,
whose title comes from the fact that one of its older and best known
men, Fazar Ali, was for many years an accountant (munshi or kerani for
the Maharaja of Tripura's revenue collection in the area. Two of the
lineages four families are "rich peasants," although not creditors, the
other two are in the "middle peasant"category.

Fazar Ali and his sons are regarded with wide-spread distrust and dis-
affection in the village and the samaj of which it is a part. Much of
this distrust stems from the fact that Fazar Ali is said to have uti-
lized his position as a revenue accountant to enrich hbmself at the
expense of his neighbors. He is further said to have been associated
with a great amount of unsavory scheming and plotting in the politics

of the samaj (discussed below), which has earned for him a great deal

of continuing hostility. His son, Monu Mia, is regarded in the same
light, always suspect for behind-the-scenes manipulations. When I
arrived in Hajipur, Monu Mia was the Chairman of Hajipur's c00perative
society (mentioned in Example 9), but during my stay he came under cri-
ticism for having stolen the cooperative's funds and was ousted from
the Chairmanship, which went, as 4.52 acres, of which nearly half is
mortgaged out. He holds no mortgage from others so far as I could
learn, and others said that he was so untrustworthy that they would
never go to him for money. Fazar Ali's personal property has diminished
and his lineage's status is threatened not only by the problem of main-
taining wealth but also by declining esteem in the eyes of other villa-
gers. Fazar Ali's sister married a man who came to live in the Munshi
Bari after marriage (ghar jamai; see discussion below). This man, Rajab
Ali, is a "middle peasant" with over 3 acres, to whose sole daughter
Fazar Ali arranged to have married to his eldest son, Amirul Islam.
Rajas Ali had begun to register his patrimony in the name of his daughter
and Amirul Islam. Thus, the losses in mortgage sustained by Fazar Ali
may be recouped in this manner, by his sons.

One member of the Munshi lineage is a debtor middle peasant, the owner
of less than 1.5 acres most of which is mortgaged out to various other
families. This man is obliged to earn his living share-crapping his own

100

his own land held in mortgage by others. The fourth family in the
Munshi Bari is that of Bashar Mia, the eldest man in the lineage, now
blind. He has several sons, who can work his land holding of over
4.5 acres, but he occasionally hires labor as well, since one of his
sons is employed as a clerk in Comilla town.

The Munshi lineage thus represents the kinds of variation existent
in one lineage. It also represents a formerly powerful family which
may have appeared to have vegun an incipient decline in influence in
village and local affairs.

Example 11: The Hajipur Kobiraj Homestead

Hajipur's Kobiraj Bari is the home of the descendants of Dona Mia

(see example 4) who moved several generations ago from another vil-
lage nearby. The sons of Dona Mia have managed to amass a land hol-
ding of over 7 acres, part of which is held by the eldest, a man of
seemingly ancient vintage, Akkas Ali, 3 rich peasant with over 4
acres. Kayam Ali, his younger brother, is a creditor middle peasant,
who rents out a small portion of his land and has lent a little money,
thus holding land in mortgage. Akkas Ali's grandson holds an Inter-
mediate Arts (2 years of college) degree and is a high school teacher
in Comilla town. For this reason, Akkas Ali, and his son and grand-
son, among whom land is held jointly, regularly hire labor. Moreover,
Akkas Ali has begun to register his land in his grandson's name, for
he is afraid that his daughters, who have married without inheritance
might at some point return to claim inheritance, thus threatening land
loss to the lineage as a whole.

The Kobiraj homestead is an example of a lineage which has grown in

size and wealth from comparatively poor origins in 4 generations. Its
members are constantly concerned about the relative wealth and power

of the lineage, as well as about its respectability. Kayam Ali, the
second son of Dona Mia, learned something of the art of curing cattle
illnesses and became known in the area as a kobiraj, which is the source
of one of the homestead's titles. This lineage is also known, however,
as Faraizi Bari, for it is said that Dona Mia was a very pious man and
his sons wish that image to remain. They have managed to secure mar-
riage ties with lineages variously entitled Majumdar, Munshi, Haji and
other high status titles in various parts of the thana. A conversation
with Hakim Mia, the school teacher grandson of Kayam Ali, makes the con-
sciousness of their rise quite clear. At one point, he referred to
their rivalry with other lineages, particularly that of the Munshi
homestead, and said: "We have increased our population quite a bit now
and have gained a bit of land. Grandfather is a good man and well re-

spected in the village. These days no one wishes to give us any trouble."

Example 12: The Kazis of Mauza Imamgaon

One of the homesteads peripheral to Hajipur's core is that of an impover-
ished Kazi family whose members still retain that distinguished title.

101

Its members are all land poor or landless, having lost most of their
prOperty in mortgage over the years. All of the men who are still able
work what remains of their own land, till that of others, held in lease,
and in the winter months are engaged as rickshaw pullers, hiring the
vehicles from others in Alirbazar. They are recognized in Hajipur and
environs as a poor lineage and the Kazis are singled out for the dona-
tion of cow hides during the festival of Id—uZ-Azha (Kbrbani Id), when
animals are ritually slaughtered for the celebration and during IdLuZ-
Fitna when the end of Ramadan marks the occasion of a great fest. It
is encumbent on the wealthy to give away the hides of the animals, whose
meat they otherwise consume, to the disadvantaged.

The poor Kazis are well regarded, however, by other villagers. and they
are always welcomed in villager gatherings. One of their members has
joined the c00perative society in Hajipur and has taken loans with mod-
erate interest in the hope of improving his lot. The others had not

done so at the time of my research.

Example 12: Shona Mia of Tinpara

Shona Mia is a member of a grihasthi lineage, only one of whose indivi-

dual families is a middle peasant in economic category. Shona Mia owns

only .06 acres of land, which has been mortgaged off; he is, in effect,
landless. He earns his living by rickshaw pulling and day labor in the
fields of others. He and his agnatic relatives are rarely seen as parti-
cipants in collective activities in Tinpara and, with the exception of

Shana Mia, are fearful of many of their neighbors. Shona Mia claims

that they were once called Kazi, but neither they nor their neighbors

use the title at the present time.

The above examples are broadly indicative of the various statuses and
classes in Hajipur and Tinpara. As evident in Example 9, some of the wealthier
families have succeeded in maintaining and improving both land ownership and
status, as well as power. This is the case of the Hajipur Mahisans, whose imr
portance and influence in Hajipur affairs will be made manifest in subsequent
chapters. Beginning as cattle traders, the lineage's early settlers in the
area bequeathed to their descendants the economic wherewithal to maintain a
long-standing position of power in the village and the area. They continue in
that position by time-worn methods which are central to social organization

and structure, notably that of money lending and land renting. In Example 10,

the case of the Munshis reflects the process of decline, in which a formerly

102

powerful man has begun to lose his land. As will be shown, the role of the
llunshis in Hajipur has begun to be considerably diminished, some of the
events in which process I shall report below. At the same time, An Example
11 reflects the graduate rise to economic and social "respectability" of a
family, the Kobiraj, from humble beginnings, a necessarily gradual process
'which is now in its third generational "phase." Finally, Examples 12'and l3
briefly describe the plight of "poor peasant" families, thrown on the mercies
of their neighbors, as in the case of the Kazis, and dependent on wage labor
as the basis of their.economic survival. For these, it would seem, the

chances of gaining in wealth and status seem very few.

Summary

The traditional Ashraf>AjZaf status categories, to the extent that these
historically reflected a "caste" system in this part of East Bengal, no longer
retain that significance. As I have tried to show, at the end of the 19th
Century and well on into the 20th Century, a process of "ashrafization" took
place on a wide-spread scale, for which reason it is commonly mentioned in the
literature on this subject that most East Bengali Muslims refer to themselves
as Sheikhs. I have suggested that, just as the Mahisyas and other cultivating
castes are "dominant" in (Hindu) West Bengal, so it is possible to think of
the Sheikhs of rural East Bengal as a "dominant caste." While the remnants of

certain "functional groupings,"

or "serving castes" of AjZ f status are to be
found in heavily populated districts like Comilla, standing in quasi-caste re-
lationship to the "dominant"cultivating group, caste, as the basis for social
stratification in villages like Hajipur and Tinpara is not primary. Rather, as
I have tried to show, it is possible to delimit rural classes, which reflect the

unequal distribution of economic and political power (as I shall try to demon-

strate in subsequent chapters), along the continuum of which status also tends

103

in the long run to be distributed. At the same time, social stratification
in Tinpara and Hajipur is as yet flexible between the "middle" and "upper"
strata, although it is possible to perceive a tendency toward polarization

at the extremes. The vast majority of villagers hold very small amounts of
land and it is not difficult to lose what they have. While over time the
transition from "middle" to "rich" peasant status maintains a certain con-
stancy, there is a far easier transition from "debtor middle" to land poor
and landless situations. That is, although there is a certain process of
"rising and falling" between the "middle" and "rich" peasant categories - and
'we must remember that we are dealing with relatively small amounts of land
owned in any of these cases - the workings of the "system" under current eco—
logical pressures seem continuously to force people out at the bottom. Gough
(1969) has suggested that a similar situation has begun to take place in
South India, which she argues is related to the rural unrest which seems an-
demic to that part of India. Similarly, the events of early 1969 in East
Pakistan, in which wide-spread rural violence was reported and contributed

to the downfall of the Ayub regime, must surely in part have their causes in

the processes I have discussed.

CHAPTER VI

THE VILLAGES AND THEIR EXTENSIONS - I

This thesis begins in Chapter 1 with a brief outline of the formal
social organization in Hajipur and Tinpara, in which the reyai, village,
samaj and market area were delimited as the relevant social units. Subse-
quent chapters have focussed on the underlying ecological and economic bases
of that organization. In the next two chapters, I shall discuss the ways in
which economic, kinship, religious and political systems function alternately
to maintain local reyai and village intensive organization on the one hand
and the territorially extensive organization of the samaj and market area on
the other hand. Some attempt will be made to put these processes in histori-

cal perspective.

Economic factors in the development of local groupings

There are several ways in which the channels of organized activity in
Hajipur and Tinpara structure the internal social cohesion of these villages,
'while at the same time lending themselves to the extension of effective so-
cial units beyond their boundaries. I have previously pointed out that the
proximity of homesteads resulting from the pattern of rural settlement pro-
vides the basis for interaction and thus a certain degree of internal soli-
darity which defines the relevant village itself. But the delimitation of
village boundaries, as well as the areas into which the activities of vil-
lagers overlap beyond them, seems partly related to the location of land
owned by members of the villages. Population pressure and the resultant frag-
mentation of holdings to which I have earlier referred, contribute to the

104

105

process by which these individually small groupings extend themselves into
larger ones. For the relevant question here is how the reyai homestead
cluster either by itself or with others, become the village? And how do
these groupings unite to form a samaj?

Part of the answer to these questions may be found in an examination
of the location of fragmented land holdings. Table 8 and Table 9 give'tabu-

lations of land location for Hajipur and Tinpara villagers respectively.

Table 8

Land Location of Hajipur Villagers

 

 

acres 1
Hajipur Mauza 72.60 72.0 '
Samaj mauzas 24.18 24.0
Market area
non-samaj 3.90 3.9
Totals 100.68‘ . 100.0
Table 9

Land Location of Tinpara Villagers

 

acres 2
Tinpara*
village mauzas 56.28 95.9
Samaj mauzas .56 .9
Market area
non-same 1.85 3.2
Totals 58.69 100.0

*Includes Mauzas Imamgaon, Radhapur,
Rampur, all of which are part of
the samaj.
It will be noted that the majority, but by no means all, of the land
holdings in Hajipur fall within the mausa boundaries in which are located
the 10 homesteads I-have called the "core" of Hajipur. The next largest per-

centage lie in.mauzas, some of which are contiguous with mausa Hajipur, which

constitute the samaj grouping of which Hajipur forms a part. The remainder of

106

Hajipur villagers' holdings lie in mauzas which are in the general market
area, although part of neither the village nor the samaj. By way of contrast,
over 90 percent of the land holdings of Tinpara villagers are located in the
3 mauzas, parts of which form Tinpara as a socially recognized village. Very
few of their holdings are beyond the general area of their homesteads.

From these data it can be seen that, in addition to the factor of rela-
tive proximity of settlement, location of the villagers' land holdings is re-
lated to the formation of socially recognized villages. Moreover, the frag-
mentation of holdings results in the dispersal of holdings-outside the imme-
diate boundaries of socially defined villages and contributes to the deve10p-
ment of multi-village lineages, such as that of the samaj.

Tinpara is a socially defined village by virtue of at least 2 important‘
facts. Firstly, its constituent homesteads are clustered together in such a
way as to form a "natural" interactional grouping. Secondly, the greatest
part of its members' land holdings lies, albeit in fragmented plots, in those
parts of mauzas whose paras ("neighborhoods") form Tinpara as a homestead clus-
ter. In the case.of Hajipur, however, there are 3 reyais which constitute the
village as socially defined. Here the data show that the bulk of Hajipur
villagers' fragmented land holdings lie.in the very mausa which gives Hajipur
its name and in which its 3 reyais are predominantly located. Thus, the same
conclusion is possible in this case; Hajipur is a village by virtue of the
location of land holdings and the relative proximity of settlement. Land
holding, thus, is not confined to the immediate mauzas comprising these vil-
lages, but crosses mauza boundaries as do social groupings, and in this res-
pect contributes to the formation not only of village, but also of larger,
groupings.

For many individual and collective activities center primarily on the

107

village, but also tend to overlap into areas beyond their limits as well.
An unobtrusive measure of the degree of familiarity villagers have with
each other may be seen in the fact that purdah - the seclusion of women -
is relaxed within the boundaries of both villages. Men in both Hajipur and
Tinpara can go unannounced into each others' homes and be received by the
women there in the absence of male members of the homestead. Moreover,
even in the homes of the more wealthy peasants, to whose zeal in maintain-
ing purdah norms I have referred, fellow villagers are as often as not re-
ceived within the confines of homes to which a less well known visitor,
otherwise entertained in the kaehari ghar, would not be readily admitted.
These facts, of course, may partially be explained by kinship connection,
in many cases, since among kinsmen the bars of purdhh tend generally to be
lowered. But not all villagers are directly related, either by consanguineal
or affinal ties, yet they are normally accorded these "privileges" nonethe-
less. It is worth noting also that non-related men and women in such situa-
tions are likely to address each other respectfully by kin terms appropriate
to their age and sex. Perhaps more indicative of inter-homestead familiarity
is the fact that women are often allowed to go without the burka ("veil") with-
in the confines of village boundaries, whereas their travel beyond those
limits is discouraged and even forbidden.‘ Moreover, when women do leave their
villages, for example, to visit their natal homesteads elsewhere, they are not
only veiled but, if possible, travel in rickshaws which are elaborately shrouded
with cloth to shield the passenger from the prying eyes of passers-by.

In addition to informal patterns of interaction reflected in the relaxa-
tion of purdah restrictions, certain more functionally specific activities tend
to take place most often among co-residents in the same village, rather than be-

tween them and outsiders. Labor exchange, for example, when it is not practiced

108

in a given instance.between kinsmen, is most likely to take place among fellow
villagers. Money lending and borrowing, as well as the renting of land, also
follow a similar pattern. Of 100 such transactions for which I was able to
fain information regarding the homestead locations of the individuals involved,
59 had taken place among fellow villagers in Hajipur and Tinpara respectively,
25 had been transacted.between members of the villages and individuals in the
samaj mauzas, and the remaining 16 were between villagers and people resident
in.mauzas which were not part of their own samaj grouping in the Alirbazar
market area.,

Thus, while informal interaction reflects the internal social cohesion
of both villages, it is important to note.that functionally specific, dyadic
relations reflect not only a tendency to cluster in village groupings, but al-
so reflect the way in which interactional patters of village life extend theme

selves beyond village boundaries.

The role of kinship

 

In no way is the tendency toward extensiveness in social ties better re-
flected than in kinship organization. Two aspects of Bengali Muslin kinship
stand out and are relevant to this general discussion: the non-corporate char-
acter of the domestic group and the extension of marriage ties.

The building block of social organization in Hajipur and Tinpara is the
homestead, residential locus of the patrilineal extended family and its allied
segments. Physically the homestead is composed of mud and bamboo dwellings,
arranged in more or less rectangular fashion around one or more courtyards,
these flanked by subsidiary buildings such as cooking shed, cow sheds, and
the like. Within this physical unit, the domestic group is organized around
a patrilineally extended family (gusthi). But while the patrilineal kin group

forms the basis for the domestic unit, not all residents in the homestead are

109

necessarily members of this patrilineage. For it is common in the home-
steads of both villages to find matrilateral and affinal kinsmen of the basic
agnatic group and, indeed, genealogically unconnected residents may be found
as well, the reasons for the presence quite varied. Kinship Diagrams 3, 4,
and 5 give examples of homestead compositions in Hajipur and Tinpara. Dia-
gram 3 indicates a simple, if populous, patrilineal extended family, with no
non-lineal kinsmen or non-kin residents at the time of research. Diagram 4
shows the presence of a resident son-in-law (ghar jamai) whose descendants
are nonetheless counted in the lineage of his father-in-law - a point I shall
discuss in more detail. Diagram 4 reflects the way in which matrilineal
kinsmen and non-related residents may be integrated into the structure of a
given homestead.

Regardless of the particular affiliation in each case, it is common for
most residents to own homestead prOpoerty. For the Bengal Muslim gusthi is
not a corporate group as unilineal descent groups have often been described
in other parts of the world (see, e.g., Fortes 1953), if the term corporate
is meant to include joint ownership of lineage propoerty. In the homestead
itself, joint ownership of property is not the rule and the homestead plot,
its physical structures, other economic items such as cattle and plants, as
well as agricultural land, may be rigorously divided among adult residents.

The homestead is thus further broken down into a number of households -
this term used here in explicit contradistinction to the term homestead - in
which dwell sub-lineal branches of the patrilineal kin group as a whole, as
well as its non-lineally allied co-residents. These households, known common-
ly as chula (meaning "hearth" or "oven") or khana ("eating group"), have a
certain measure of economic independence one from the other, made explicit by

the practice of maintaining separate dwelling units for each group. The

NHmeHw UH>GN>Z w

 

 

 

D D >

 

”1
>1

p I nonsense

 

 

 

Koreans was” I <HHHomm nonwocn

cosonmnnmnmm new Honow :Hnmow: ten: new
nonnmmunmnn escapees on m omnnpweoomw we:

macaw. cope absence Bowen one noonmmonnoa
some.

110

111

KINSHIP DIAGRAM 4

TA

>-
O
r.
O

 

Indeceased

Abul Hossain Bari - Village Tinpara

This diagram demonstrates the build-up of a patrilineage despite the fact that
the apical male had no sons. His son-in-law is resident, as are his grandsons
by his daughter (dohitro), now married themselves. This family is of the linear
joint type with respect to both residential unit and land ownership.

Duo

”H2mme UH>DW>Z m

 

b o n announce

 

 

__ _D
(5..
’-
O
>—

 

wmuwcn worsno wane I <HHHmmm Heavens

 

arum newness moose new emmnmnemnnm on one Boo nrnocmr nto £H<mn. "so
cocoon 0m €303 Hosannemn m son :30 one awesome 50409 Homo new roenmnmme

one swoon no: not HH<mm names sen: rem sonnHHonoan nonmenm.

zonm nus

onmmmnom On a nonlnmwmnme swoon sen: orHHmnmn Ammo mxmsowm u now one
Homes Hm ono cross on Hnmnmonm om carousemm nonnH<mww

omowmnocnev.
Home vowwmwnocm sonnwmmm.

«Home no new moHnoH sows.

arm ncsvonm woos now cause on now ze<mm. Bonn

112

113

individual plots within the homestead are owned (usually) by the male members
of each household grouping. Absolute rights of ownership are, however, cir-
cumscribed by the unlikelihood that the owner of a given household plot would
be allowed to sell it, willy nilly, to anyone whom he might choose outside,
and against the wishes of the other members, of the homestead. Members of
each household may possess agricultural land (either individually or jointly)
and the household, with its members as a labor force and the land they culti-
vate, constitutes an individual peasant farm. That is, as an economic unit,
the household is the minimal economically productive group in rural Bengali
society.

The households of Hajipur and Tinpara may be divided into 6 types, follows
ing the classifications used by Kolenda (1967) as in TablelO. While in this
part of South Asia, as elsewhere, the "joint family" is usually stated to be
the ideal for the domestic group, it will be seen that simple and supplemented
nuclear families constitute over 70 percent of all households in both villages.
The reasons for this are similar to those explaining the prevalence of nuclear,
as opposed to joint, families elsewhere in Bengal (Nicholas 1965-66) and the
Sub-continent (Kolenda 1967). In general, the prevalence of nuclear families
is related to the small size of land holdings (1.5 acres the average for the
two villages) relative to the amount of land needed to support a large resi-
dential group. Also, Bengali Muslims practice the equal division of inheritance
(among males; see discussion below), which usually takes place at the time of
the father's death and is accompanied by the separation of the brothers into
nuclear family households. This is not universal, however, as the presence of
lineal joint and lineal collateral joint households in Hajipur and Tinpara
shows, and it is not uncommon for a father to share his property in some measure

with his sons before his death, in which cases joint residence households are

114

TABLE 10*

HAJIPUR AND TINPARA:
HOUSEHOLD TYPES AND COMPOSITION**

 

 

Type Number of Percent Number of Percent
Households Total Population Population
Households Per Type Per Type
Single 6 5.8 6 1.1
Sub-Nuclear 7 6.7 22 3.9
Nuclear 54 51.9 255 45.0
Supplemented
Nuclear 19 18.3 110 19.4
Lineal Joint 11 10.6 91 16.1
Lineal Collateral
Joint 7 6.7 82 14.5
Totals 104 100.0 566 100.0

*Tabular summary of data for each village given in Appendix II.
**Type categories taken from those of Kolenda (1967). It should be noted that

not all those she has defined exist in this sample, e.g., collateral joint
(joint among brothers).

maintained. As will be noted, nonetheless, collateral joint residence is not
found in this sample since, as elsewhere (Nicholas 1965-66), division of inher-
ited prOpoerty among brothers at the time of the father's death is almost auto-
matic, leading to separate nuclear family households, even though the brothers
may have shared propoerty and lived jointly with their father prior to his
death. A more detailed discussion of the economics of family types in Hajipur
and Tinpara is provided in Appendix II.

A further complication in the partitioning of homestead property is evi-
dent in the practice, most commonly seen in the homesteads with larger popula-

tion, of combining groups of individual households into what are called bhadra

115

groupings (probably from the word bhadrasan meaning "kin group" or "lineage";
another word used in the local dialect is hishya). That is, for example. two
or more brothers who have divided residentially into separate households may
nonetheless occupy contiguous plots within the homestead and utilize common
parts of the homestead area and property to the exclusion of others. Thus,
bhadra divisions arise when the descendants of a given group of siblings fur-
ther divided and specifically utilize sections of the homestead among theme
selves. These are recognized as homestead sub-divisions even though the petri-
lineal kin group (gusthi) remains effective for members of different bhadra
groupings who are so related. Kinship Diagrams 7 and 7 give examples of bhadna
organization.

Thus the homestead is divided into various sub-units along the lines of
patrilineal kinship and property ownership. Such division does not, as a
practical matter, preclude cooperation among homestead residents when it comes
to the use of each others' possessions or household area within the homestead.
But it does define rights of ownership in both normative and legal terms. The
explicit character of those rights is reflected in the pervasiveness of conflict
over homestead property' by members of different households, in which recourse
may be had to actual litigation in the civil courts, pitting kinsmen and co-
residents one against the other.

The economics of kinship and the organization of the homestead are, then,
a complicated matter. Nor does a discussion of inheritance patterns in Hajipur
and Tinpara reduce the complexity of these villages' kinship systems. Kinship
Diagram 8 demonstrates some simple models of inheritance, as understood by the
villagers themselves. It will be apparent that wives and daughters may inherit
property, albeit unequally in relation to men, according to Islamic law. A

common rule of thumb in the distribution of patrimony is that "Two daughters

116

.son no: on huumeoun m.uo£umw no: muaBmsmuu one means:

Isa onm nuagB ea .Aeusdh acxmv smaucalsom unmofimou m noes nousmnmo maao am mo ommo sou msonm
H> oaefimxm .HomH mo.monmnwvuo mama hHwEmm Seams: was he nooofiouom Boa oofiuumue m .uonumm
Ivnmuw we: mo umnu mmooooua sumac m.uonumm we: we uwuonnw hafiummwooon nos ewe cowoamuw m 30a
meocm > maesmxm .Amnom on mum ouozu mono panama was ea «av muounmomo new moon macaw cowunn
newsman Hones uooamou >H one HHH moHamem .unmumnoo was: Hoauoe ooaoows m mo monoumfixo one
.wnowumsHAEou Hmoauonuoakz oBu ow wuounwomo was meow waofim cOfiunnfiuumHo can 305m HH can H
moHemem .cowumnufim some aw poow>wv on wasoe mama mo mmxox 0H Son 30am on ooxmm mums o>onm
ooEEmumeo mm mnoHumnufim ooamufiuoznfl one aesmnex Hmofluo£u0e%n Sofie ooeow>uoucfl muowmaafl>

moamufiuoncH mo momma

 

dxo C»W.\#.\CL

MN.“ find” H

'1" 1.1..- |l

. \u, 4 tab ,I\J
UOHOU Noondfigct

. Ill]
J l‘ I ....A l'lWl‘,r.

CI.)

 

I..-)v.‘

i!
A: -..... -.....»4
Q q TU .L .kf\: ..SLK O N” H (.r Cl.
' .0 r r
‘

q

" “O
Q/
Q
“Q

 

 

 

 

 

 

OX. 0.? sec? . oKQM ONCQW
MBA... m {V .qude .xN oonxau o\. oh faufie 1M 4M

\(YJ {as 4...: )J )J
\ule) }
3 at no see b a a a
okMNOH q NM\Q H q RON OM Assn u\o_0 u 4%
$M~ax~ ... .

 

 

 

 

 

 

117

are equal to one son," although in Hajipur and Tinpara this rule was honored
as much in the breach as in the practice. But the fact that women have the
right to inherit some property and often insist on doing so has implications
for the character of affinal and matrilateral ties of their patrikin.

A married woman living away from her natal homestead is entitled to in-
herit a share of her father's property, as the ideal models depicted in Kin-
ship Diagram 8 show. In many cases, however, daughters either do not claim
their inheritance or are in fact deprived of it by certain devices. Of 130
adult Muslim women in Hajipur and Tinpara who had been married at least once,
only 16 or little more than 12 percent had any land registered in their names,
so far as I could learn at the time of research. In some cases, fathers had
begun the process of transferring land to their sons by registering certain
portions of it in their names. This was-done explicitly, some informants ex-
plained, to preclude the possibility that a daughter who had married out of
the homestead could later claim the land, since it would already be in the
possession of her brother(s) and thus not part of the father's patrimony at
the time of his death. In the cases of some of the women living post-maritally
in Hajipur and Tinpara, these had inherited land in their natal villages, but
the land was effectively farmed by their brothers or else a kind of "land
transfer" had taken place, in that their land in their natal villages had
been sold and the money thereby obtained used to buy land locally near Hajipur
or Tinpara, which was subsequently registered in their husbands' names.

But it is most common for women "voluntarily" to forego their rights to
inherit land in order to maintain good relations with members of their patri-
lineages. This was often stated as being the norm by Hajipur and Tinpara vil-
lagers and this expressed motivation is found in other research reports per-

taining to the subject as well. Florence McCarthy (1967: 31-32), who has

118

studied villages in Camilla thana, notes:

"Village women keep strong ties with their father's family, even

though they spend the majority of their lives in the varis of

their husbands. This acts as a built-in security for them in

case of divorce or widowhood.

"(An) alternative for a woman who is widowed is to return to her

own family. If her ties are strong and her relationship good, upon

the death of her husband, her brothers might welcome her home to

live with them. If, however, her relationship with them is not

good, if she has taken part of her father's inheritance, for example,

the brothers might not ask her home, or they may not take such good

care of her. In this context it is not surprising that women do not

usually take that part of the inheritance due them, but invest it in

their future security bygiving it to their brothers."
The same security considerations are operative, I might add, because of the
ever-present possibility of divorce, more easy for a man to initiate than for
a woman. Over 16 percent of all marriages I recorded in Hajipur and Tinpara
had ended in divorce at the time of research.

What I have said thus far about inheritance and inter-lineage ties via
marriage may be summarized as follows. While the domestic group is not an
economically corporate unit, in the sense of having joint ownership of pro-
perty, it may be said that the basic bias of the inheritance system is to
keep property, and especially cultivation land, in the hands of its male mem-
bers. This patrilineal bias in inheritance practices reflects a desire to
keep prOperty in the possession of lineage members, protecting it from pass-
ing out to other lineages through females who have marrried out, despite their
legal right to patrimonly. The exceptional case of uxorilocal residence would
seem to "prove" the rule. For where a man resides post-maritally in his father-
inrlaw's house - such a husband know as a ghar jamai ("resident son-in-law") -
he cannot expect to inherit the latter's property. Rather, the father's pro-
perty is passed direction to his dohitro ("daughter's children"). The daughter

herself may inherit it first, depending on the age of her children at the time

of her father's death, but in any case the land is rarely ever formally in the

119

possession of her husband. It should be noted, moreover, that a ghar jamai's
children are reckoned as members of his wife's, not his own, patrilineage.26
Thus, when a woman marries out and does not exercise her right to in-
herit, it would seem that reasonably good relations between her own and her
husband's lineages are at least partially ensured. And indeed, in my observa-
tion, both courteous and warm relationships among affinally related kin are
the rule. The woman's husband is accorded a special welcome when he visits
her father and her brothers. The husband's family reciprocates by allowing
frequent visits of the woman to her own family during times of the year when
household work is less demanding_upon her. McCarthy (1967: 31) reports that
the relations between a woman and her brothers are supported by specific obli-
gations on the part of the latter. "Twice a year ..., the brothers have to
bring their sisters to their home. They also have to give them.saris, and
clothes to any children that might have come along." Thus, women do not exer-
cise their claims over propoerty that they might have because of their affec-
tionate relationship with their brothers, on the one hand, and, on the other,
to preserve future claims on their brothers' support. Their brothers recipro-
cate, continuing the close relationship which is said to exist in childhood
and early adolescence between brothers and sisters, by "taking care of" their
sisters, even while they are married and in the event of their widowhood or
divorce. It should be noted also, of course, that the brothers stand in a
"mother's brother" (mama) relationship to the sisters' children, which, by
implying a special affection for the latter (bhagina, bhagini; "sister's son,
duaghter"), is a further factor in cementing the relationship. But a woman
can always claim her inheritance and it is not uncommon for this to happen,
despite the social pressures against it. When it does take place, relations
between a woman and her husband via a via her brothers are likely to be

strained.

120

I have dwelt on this subject with two ends in mind. Firstly, I want
to outline some of the reasons for which non-unilineal, matrilateral and
affinal kinship ties constitute an important channel for social relations
in Hajipur, Tinpara and their neighboring communities. Lest this seem an
overly obvious point, I should remind the reader that anthropologists have
usually thought unilineal descent systems to operate in a manner which gives
little emphasis to matrilateral and affinal relationships. The basis for
our having thought that this is the case comes primarily from the field of
African ethnology in which traditional structural-functionalist interpreta-
tions have laid down this view of unilineal descent systems. Data from
Asian societies, however, have given rise to some recent interpretations of
unilineal descent which point out that matrilateral and affinal relationships
are far more important in the overall structure of these societies than the
traditional structuralist interpretations of African data on this subject
have led us to believe (see, e.g., Gallin 1960; 1968). The Muslim Bengali
gusthi is not required by rules of marriage to be exogamous, as unilineal
descent groups elsewhere are often reported to be. This is so because Islam
permits both parallel and cross cousin marriage and in some parts of the Mus-
lim world lineage endogamy is practiced to a very high extent. But despite
the culturally allowed option for lineage endogamy, it is little practiced
in the villages of East Bengal with which I am most familiar. Thus, a second
reason for emphasizing matrilateral and affinal relations is to seek a general
explanation for the choice against lineage endogamy which rural Bengali Muslims
exercise by overwhelmingly common preference. I believe that the explanation
lies in the role played by extensiveness of kinship ties in the elaboration
of the social structure of the market area.

Table 11 presents data which reflect the contribution of marriage ties to

121

TABLE 11

LOCATION OF MARITAL TIES OF HAJIPUR AND TINPARA*

 

 

Place N Marriaggsf Z Area in Square Miles
same village 29 6.58 less than .5
out of village

in samaj 62 14.06 .5 to 1 square mile
out of samaj

in market area 103 23.35 4 square miles
out of market area

in Union 53 12.02 18 square miles
out of Union

in thana 173 39.23 107 square miles
out of thana 21 4.76 unknown
Totals 441 100.00

*Muslims only; area is cumulative, does not reflect actual travel distances,
which vary depending on season, road conditions, etc.

the village-samaj-market area ensemble I have described earlier. These data
include marriages over a period of 1 to 4 generations. There is comparatively
little lineage endogamy and intra-village marriages are not great in number.
Nor do marital ties function specifically to lend cohesion to the samaj mauzas.
However, if intra-village, samaj, and market area marriages are combined, it
can be seen that nearly 45 percent of the marriages fall within an area of 4
square miles, precisely the market area which is the locus of other ties which
channel most of the villagers' daily activities. Thus, lineal and village en-
dogamy contribute to the formation of the larger social unit. The remainder
of the marriages fall largely within the Union and the thana, illustrating

the extent to which most villagers' ties with the world at large are likely to

stretch, if marital relationships are taken to be at least one indicator of them.

122

As noted in Table 11, the marriage data presented are for Muslims only.
In contrast to the Muslims, the Hindu families in Hajipur, Tinpara and
environs, required to seek mates with their respective castes, have limi-
ted choice about where mates will come from, since their fellow castement
are distributed irregularly in small groups throughout the locality. All
the Hindu families are further guided in their choice of mates by their own
caste samaj groupings - not to be confused with the samaj groupings as I
have discussed it here (for a more detailed description of Bengali Hindu
caste samaj as the determinant of effective marrying units, see Klass 1966).
I collected genealogical data from 5 Hindu homesteads, the Carpenters and
washerman of Hajipur and Tinpara proper, plus two nearby families of Jugi
weavers and one family of Barbers. Forty out of 78 marriages among these
castes for which I have locational data are with families in each respective
caste outside the thana - 51.30 percent, as opposed to the mere 4.76 percent
for the Muslims in these villages.

It is further interesting to relate the locational data on marriages
to the general tendencies noted above toward a certain amount of class and
status group inter-marriage. In general, the Muslim high status lineages do
not-demonstrate marked divergence from the data presented in Table 11. But
certain of these seem more concerned to find properly equivalent statue fami-
lies than others, and these families differ from the norm of intra-thana
marriages. Thus, for example, the status-conscious imams of the Tinpara
Khondakar lineage arranged 7 out of 31 recorded marriages, or 22 percent of
them, with families outside the thana. Also, the Majumdars of Mauza Radhapur
arranged 55 percent of their recorded marriages in the past several genera-
tions with high status lineages. Of a total of 20 marriages for which I have

locational data in this lineage, 8, or 40 percent are outside the thana. Thus,

123

while most high status lineages do not tend to look far afield for marriage
alliances appropriate to their social standing, some do so. The fact that
most do not, however, allows the conclusion that the class and status lines
which I have delineated in an earlier section are Operative primarily with-
in the market area secondarily within the Union and the thana itself. This
further supports one of the general findings of this research, that the mar-
ket area, rather than-the "village," is the most important territorial refer-
ent for "community" in this part of East Pakistan.

The extensiveness of marital connection and the importance of matrilat-
eral and affinal ties are also related to the same ecological features which
underlie the social structure of these villages as a whole. The Islamic
law that all members of the patrilineal descent group must inherit, albeit
unequally, is in fact contradicted by the cultural expectation.that.daughters
‘will not claim agricultural land. To the extent, then, that these inheritance
practices in effect resemble the Hindu Dayabhaga system of inheritance, they
reflect one of the many ways in which Bengali Muslim culture represents an
adaptation of the Islamic Great Tradition to Bengal's historical conditions.
For the systematic deprivation of the right of inheritance to women probably
is related to the decreasing availability of land all throughout the 19th
Century at least (I do not know how far back this "local adaptation" of in-
heritance practices historically extends). At the same time, the Islamic
principle that both sons and daughters must inherit patrimony is used by both
‘men andwomen under conditions of poverty and land scarcity to obtain land
‘when the possibility of successfully invoking the rule arises.25 This helps
to explain the solicitude brothers will display toward "good" sisters, which
otherwise expresses simple human affection and cultural values. At the same

time, the ever-present possibility of tension between brothers-inelaw is

124

similarly explained. Thus, for a variety of reasons, matrilateral and af-
final relationships are attended to with scarcely less priority than are
patrilineal ones. Kinship in Hajipur and Tinpara thus takes on a certain
bilaterality in practical terms, despite the fact that it is an ideological-

ly patrilineal system.

The Role of Religion

If kinship functions as a way of extending social ties beyond the im-
mediate localized group, religion has certain social features which serve
to emphasize its internal unity. This may be seen in a discussion of col-
lective religious activities.

There are a number of religious requirements of the faithful in Islam,
the fulfillment of which is done in groups. One of these is the obligation
to perform weekly congregational prayer (jumma namaz). Moreover, certain
holidays, recurring annually and distributed throughout the year, are celeb-
rated in groups. There are some obvious ways in which collective worship of
this sort serves to unite local groupings.

The weekly jumma prayer is held in a local mosque. It is important to
note that while mosques come to be associated with a particular congregation,
in the area where I studied they were not usually constructed by the collec-
tive effort of the congregation. Historical information I was able to gather
regarding the construction of 4 mosques in the Alirbazar area indicates that
the donation of mosque land (Arabic: waqf) and the cost of actual construction
were contributed largely by one family in each of the cases, and in every case
a sardari lineage. Mosque construction, in the eyes of villagers, adds to
religious merit and enhances social prestige, but it is clearly dependent on

economic affluence and can be seen as consonant with political influence as

125

well. Once a mosque is constructed, however, the congregation which comes
to use it regularly and contribute in some measure to its upkeep becomes
more or less fixed over time and corresponds broadly to the locality group
surrounding the mosque. It is not an exclusive group in principle; in prac-
tice, too, the use of the mosque is open to any believer who wants to parti-
cipate in worship there, regardless of his homestead's location. Naturally,
however, peOple tend to go to the mosque nearest their home and over time

a congregation becomes stabilized.

Neither Hajipur nor Tinpara has a mosque within its mausa boundaries.
Hajipur villagers use a mosque lying to the,east of the mauza preper, in
Mauza Imamgaon, with whose residents they share not only the mosque, but
also a number of other activities. The congregation contributes to its.up-
keep, paying "dues" (chanda) once a year on the evening of Shab-e-Barat (on
the occasion of the Islamic "new year"), supporting a locally respected
maulana as the weekly prayer reader. Tinpara villagers have to travel fur-
ther for weekly worship, to a mosque southwest of Alirbazar. They are not
otherwise integrated into the groups of villagers with whom they share the
use of that mosque. Thus, while the Hajipur mosque congregation overlaps
‘with Hajipur as a local village (gram) and thus serves as another unifying
factor for that grouping, this is not the case for Tinpara villagers. In
their case, regular weekly jumma.namas gatherings bring them into contact
‘with villagers outside their own regal/village grouping, and thus serves to
extend Tinpara's contacts with other villages in the market area.

The spatial distribution of mosques thus tends to affect intra-group
and/or inter-group_solidarity, varying in each case with respect to the local
villages or reyais involved. Mosques are not built on the basis of preexis-

ting congregations, but when and if a given family has the means and the

126

desire to construct them. Some mauzas, then, have one mosque, others two

and still others none at all. It happens that Hajipur villagers have a mosque
within their own socially recognized village and so for them-the observance

of Friday prayers and joint responsibility for the upkeep of the mosque may
be seen as.a socially unifying collective activities. For Tinpara villagers,
however, worship at a_mosque clearly removed from their own village's boun-
daries brings them into contact with members of other villagers in the market
area.;

The observance of religious festivals functions socially in a similar
manner as does mosque location. Some of them focus less on the mosque and
more on collective worship at the homesteads of the dominant sardari lineages
in each village. During the festival of Shab-e-Barat, for example, the
"Night of Reckoning,” when it is said that each man's future for the coming
year is being written, it is the custom to pray long into the night, indeed,
all night in the case of the especially devout. At this time, Hajipur vil-
lagers meet at the homestead of the prominent Mahisan lineage, performing
prayer at the cement platform which the Mahisans constructed for that pur-
pose near one of their ponds. In Tinpara some of the villagers congregate on
this occasion in.the kaohari>ghar of Pradhan Ali, the most influential single
man in that village; others pray at home individually or go to their mosque.

During the month of Ramadan, when the injunction of the daily fast is
operative for all Muslims, there is a speCial prayer (tarabi namaz) required
after the breaking of the day-long fast. Villagers in both Hajipur and Tin-
para observe this prayer collectively, at the home once again of the most
prominent sardari lineage in each respective group. Other examples of this
sort might be mentioned, but the major point should be clear. During collec-

tive worship occasion, both at jumma prayers and yearly recurring holidays,

127

the unity of the local group is, in some cases, indirectly given support,
and in other cases, a certain mixing of local groupings takes place. Glasse
(1967) has reported a similar function of religion for the Matlab Thana in
northwest Camilla District, where, according to his account, groups like
the reyais of Hajipur and Tinpara are in fact congruent with collective wor-
ship groupings (milat).

But not all religious observances serve to foster group intensiveness.
On important occasions kinship ties are cemented, rather than those of local
or extended group membership. This is the case on the occasion of two major
religious festivals, Ideal-Fitr and IdLul-Azha (Korbani Id). Both festivals
are the occasion for special and relatively sumptuous feasting; the former
celebrates the end of the ramadan fast and the latter commemorates Abraham's
devotion to God expressed in his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
Matrilateral and affinal kinsmen come to these feasts and exchanges of visits
between members of different patrilineages are the significant social features
of these occasions.‘ But it should also be mentioned that the Id holidays
bring together members of different village groupings, again depending on the
location of religious places. On both holidays, it is required of the faith-
ful to observe jumma prayer not at their respective mosques, but rather at a
special Id congregational field (Idgah), a plot of land reserved primarily
for this, and few other, purposes. In Hajipur there is such a plot, donated
about 20 years ago by a pious man who had been to Mecca (from whose having
performed this pilgrimage the Haji family of Village Hajipur gets its name).
The field is surrounded by a low wall, has a pond for the performance of pre-
prayer ablutions, and a small platform where the aforementioned maulana, who
officiates at this, as well as other, ceremonies, can lead prayer and give a

sermon. 0n Id days, villagers from all parts of the Alirbazar market area

128

come to worship in Hajipur, for it happens that this village has one of the
few Idgahs in the locality. Thus, on this occasion, villagers from the samaj
groupings in perhaps 20 mauzas meet and worship together.

There is more about the role of Islam in these villages that one might
say, of course, but I choose for the purposes of the present discussion to
emphasize certain of its social features. Firstly, the collective religious
activities of villagers serve on the one hand to unite local groupings in
some instances and on the other to bring together peOple from different local
groupings. It should be clear.that locational factors - the spatial distri-
bution of mosques and Idgahs - are so important in determining the interac-
tional settings in which group unification and group extension is brought a-
bout. Secondly, the role of dominant lineages in the construction of mosques
and in the provision of other physical facilities, as well as leadership, for
collective worship activities should be noted, for this is consistent with
the organizational pattern in which social and political leadership has evol-
ved in these villages and the relationships between leadership groups are

carried on.

CHAPTER VII

THE VILLAGES AND THEIR EXTENSIONS - II

The preceding chapter has highlighted two complementary features of
social organization in Hajipur and Tinpara. Firstly, proximity of settle-
ment, land ownership, daily interaction and the performance of certain col-
lective activities serve to buttress the internal cohesiveness of the village
grouping. These factors lend support to a localized intensiveness of organ-
ization to small papulation nuclei whose residence in relatively small areas
define the "village" in this part of East Pakistan. Secondly, dyadic, often
functionally specific kinds of interaction, unite individuals and groups in
ways which cross the social boundaries of the "village." These factors, as
well as certain aspects of kinship and religious organization which I have
discussed, emphasize territorial extensiveness in social organization. The
analysis thus far attempts to take account of ecology and economy as the un-
derlying basis for these organizational forms. Another level of analysis -
the purely organizational one - can now be brought to bear on the understan—
ding of social life in these communites. In particular, I want now to focus
on the nature of political leadership in Hajipur, Tinpara and their various

reyai and samaj connections.

The Social Organization of Politics

It has already been noted that collective activities in Hajipur and
Tinpara center primarily around the homesteads of the dominant sardari lin-
eages in each case. In Hajipur there are 3 sardars, each the head of one of

3 reyai groupings: l) the Mahisan lineage, whose members own about one third

129

130

of Hajipur villagers' total land and who constitute about one sixth of its
total population, with an average of 3.08 acres per household; 2) the
Majumdar lineage with approximately 13 percent of Hajipur villagers' land
holdings, making up also about one sixth of the village population, with

an average of 1.8 acres per household; and 3) the Munshi lineage, with

about 13 percent of the village's total land holdings and about one tenth

of the total village population, with an average holding of 3.48 per house-
hold. These three lineages, then, are the largest land owners (their indi-
vidual household farm holdings taken collectively) in the village. But

only one, the Mahisan lineage, dominates over all others in land ownership
and population. The Majumdars and the Munshis are more or less equal in
land ownership, although the Majumdars' total land holdings are only a lit-
tle above average per household. The Munshis have a smaller total pepula-
tion than do either of the other two important lineages, but among them

are 2 rich peasant households out of a total of 4 households, which accounts
for the fact that the Munshi land holding average per household is the high-
est in the village. Among the Mahisans are found 3 rich peasant families,

2 of whose members are important creditors in both money lending and land
rentals. The Majumdar lineage has in its fold only 2 rich peasant house-
holds, just one of whose members is an important creditor. While there are
2 rich peasant families in the Munshi homestead, neither of these was impor-
tant as a creditor at the time of research, although one of these, that of
the sardar, Fazar Ali, can be perceived to be on the decline in land owner-
ship and influence. The majority of the Mahisan families are middle peasants;
only one household in the Mahisan homestead can be classified as poor. Seven
of the Majumdar households contain middle peasant families, and 6 of that

lineage's households are poor. In the Munshi homestead, of the 4 households,

131

2 are rich, as I have noted, 1 is of middle peasant economic status and the
other debtor middle.

All three sardari lineages are titled. But if land ownership, both
collective and individual, and population size are taken as indicators of
potential plitical dominance, the Mahisans stand out most clearly in this
respect. At the same time, despite the variations in land and population I
have described, each of the other two retain sufficient basis for influence
so as to counterweight the Mahisans who would otherwise be completely domi-
nant politically in Hajipur. Moreover, as I shall relate in more detail,
there has been intermittent conflict over the past 20 years among the 3
sardari lineages in the village, despite the fact that the three are signi-
ficantly linked by affinal connections which extend over several generations.

In Hajipur, then, there exists clear segmentation along reyai lines.
That is, the non-sardari lineages respectively acknowledge at least verbally
the claim to sardari leadership of one or the other of the three lineages.
But there are few collective activities which contribute to reyai - as op-
posed to village - solidarity. The only activity of this sort which empha-
sizes the solidarity of the reyai as Opposed to other groupings is that of
the marriage ceremony of the son or daughter of one of the reyai members.

It is customary for weddings to be held at the home of the bride. Very of-
ten, if a young man lives far away, his representatives in seeking a match
with a local girl will rely on the sardars in her village as a source of in-
dependent information regarding the status of her family and its economic
situation. When the negotiations of the match are in their final stages, the
sardar(s) of the reyai grouping to which the girl's family belongs are consul-
ted in the matter of the maharana (or maker) - the "compensatory bride price"

to be paid in the event of a divorce. Sardars are also the final arbiters

132

of who may be invited to the wedding and in all cases that I knew of invita-
tions were limited exclusively to reyai_members and kinsmen, to the exclusion
of close friends outside the group, even though they might live in the bride's
village. In Hajipur this practice is carried on with great rigidity, if the
two weddings which occurred there during my stay are any indication of its

effective force.

Example 13: Hamidulla's Daughter's Wedding

Hamidulla, a school teacher, is married to a woman of Hajipur's respec-
ted Haji family and, although from a village outside the thana, resides
in the Haji Bari. In the spring of 1967 he arranged a marriage for his
14 year old and the ceremony was held in April of that year.

Invitations to the actual ceremony followed customary protocol and pre-
sent at the event were, in addition to the groom's family and friends
from outside Hajipur, all representatives of the other lineages in
Hajipur's Reyai I, of which the Haji lineage is a member. Hamidulla
explained to me modestly that he was not a man of such great menas as

to be able to invite all the members of the reyai and so it had been de-
cided that the senior men - or their representatives - of each lineage
in the reyai would be invited. The sardar, Jabbar Mia Mahisan, did not
come, but sent in his place a younger and more vigorous man, Shahidul
Islam, his cousin, who acted as "leader" and spokesman for the reya£~
members present. At one point before the actual ceremony, Shahid called
me out and showed me the gifts that the groom's family had brought for
the bride. These included 5 saris, one of them silk, several gold orna-
ments and some cosmetics. The total value of the gifts was about Rs.
500, I was told. On query I learned that the bride's family had pre-
sented a gold ring to the groom.

The actual ceremony was presided over by the prestigious maulana who
serves the mosque frequented by Hajipur peOple. After the ceremony, a
meal was served to all those present. The reyai members, in addition
to their own partaking of the meal, helped Hamidulla to serve the other
guests, from the groom's entourage. The cost of the meal was an expense
of the Haji family. Shahidul Islam later took me aside and produced
Rs. 40 from his pocket; this, he said, was to pay the officiating
maulana as well as the barber and washerman who had helped prepare the
bride for the occasion. That amount was Rs. 20, the remainder a gift
to the various reyai families for their role both in making the match
and their participation in the ceremony. This total sum had been paid
by the groom's family.

No other members of Village Hajipur and its surrounding mauzas were pre-
sent. Earlier that afternoon I had been talking with another teacher,
whose homestead is practically adjacent to Hamidulla's, but in another

133

mauza and not part of the same reyai. The teacher, also from another
thana but locally resident with his wife's family, was one of Hamidulla's
best personal friends, but he could not be invited, he said complain-
ingly, because of the principle of reyai invitation only.

"The people of this village," he lamented disgustedly, "are backward
and clannish. In my home village, such things would never take place."

As his village lay some 30 miles away and I had never visited it, I can-
not evluate his assertion of its virtue in matters of hospitality, but
this mans' resentment at having had to miss the wedding of his best
friend's daughter serves to underline the segmentation of reyai lines,

as expressed in wedding ceremonies, which seemed characteristic of

Hajipur at that time.

Although I never had occasion to witness a wedding in Tinpara, I conclude
on the basis of discussions with informants in that village that such exclu-
siveness in wedding invitations would not have taken place. For Tinpara is
both a reyai and a village and the principle of reyai invitation to weddings
would naturally extend to the village as it is socially defined. In short,
the segmentation which exists in Hajipur has no counterpart in Tinpara. The
reason for this is because there is in Tinpara only one dominant sardari lin-
eage - in effect, one dominant individual - whose influence overrides that of
any other lineage in the village. There are 2 sardari lineages in the Tinpara
reyai. One of these is an untitled lineage, that named after a now deceased
sardar, Tara Gazi, whose mantle of leadership fell on his grandson, Safat Ali,
an aged and now feeble man. The members of Tara Gazi Homestead are numerous,
constituting nearly a fifth of Tinpara's population. Collectively, their
land ownership is the largest of any lineage in Tinpara, amounting to nearly
a fourth of the village's total holdings. But the households of Tara Gazi
Bari average only 1.4 acres of land, less than the average of 1.5 acres for
both villages. In contrast, the other sardari family is that of Pradhan Ali

Majumdar, which is not numerous. Pradhan Ali himself, the sardar owns nearly

7 acres, nearly 12 percent of Tinpara's total. He is a regular employer of

134

hired labor, both locally and of men from other thanas, as he has no sons.
The average household land holding for his homestead as a whole is 3.3 acres.
His home is a regular meeting place for Tinpara villagers in the evening and,
as I have earlier noted, collective religious activities which do not take
place in the mosque attended by the Tinpara villagers take place instead at
his home. He is an elected official, although not the Manager, of the Tinpara
Cooperative Society, which meets at his home as well, in the kaohari ghar.
Little of any consequence in the way of group activities takes place in Tin-
para without involving Pradhan Ali, and no combinations of factions within
the village which have arisen from time to time have succeeded in beating him
in conflict. If there is any example of a truly dominant individual in these
villages, it is Pradhan Ali. And the fact that activities center around his
leadership help to give focus over time to the internal organization of Tin-
para as a reyai/village grouping.

It is thus possible to conclude that an important factor in the internal
unity of both Hajipur and Tinpara is the existence of dominant lineages around
whose homesteads collective activities tend to cluster. While there is seg-
mentation in Hajipur, the Mahisans, at the time of my stay at least, were
nonetheless clearly dominant in this sense, as well as being economically and
numerically the most outstanding lineage in that village. In Tinpara the con-
stellation of forces is less complex and one lineage - indeed, effectively
one man - stands out as the "leader" in village activities.

At the same time, the relations between the sardars, their lineages and
their roles in the samaj, contribute importantly to the extensions of each
smaller village and reyai grouping which the samaj represents. Of the 5
sardari lineages in Hajipur and Tinpara, 4 are the bearers of high status

titles, and contain rich peasant families within them. My genealogical material

135

included identifiable high status lineages outside of the villages, but, due.
to the wide dispersal of marriage alliances as indicated in Table 11, it is
less easy to identify the extent to which villagers in Tinpara and Hajipur
‘have married into sardari lineages outside their own samaj. An analysis of
Inarriage into sardari lineages within their samaj grouping, however, is pos-
sible. In Hajipur and Tinpara, the 5 sardari lineages show an overall rate
of inter-marriage with other samaj sardari families of 11.4 percent of all-
'marriages (some of these, of course, overlapping with data presented for the
intermarriages of high status lineages). The 16 non-sardari Muslim lineages«
have married into samaj sardari lineages at a rate of 8.7 percent of all re-
corded marriages. While the difference between the rates of sardari lineage
‘marriage between the two groups is not statistically significant (p-.1135
using Fisher's Exact Test), the direction of the difference is toward a
clearly higher rate of intermarriage between sardari lineages than that occur—
ring between non-sardari and sardari lineages. Thus, while the sardars do
not form an exclusively intermarrying group, they tend to choose each other's
lineages as sources of mates more often than they allow such alliances to be
formed with non-sardari lineages. At the same time, however, the fact that
nonrsardari lineages can have access to mates from sardari lineages is an
important one. From the perspective of intermarriage, the samaj as a group-
ing is unified in two ways. 0n the one hand, intermarriage between the domi-
nant sardari lineages from each sub-unit of the samaj helps to solidify ties
at the "upper levels" of power and influence within the samaj itself. On
the other hand, the fact that non-sardari.lineages can gain access to sardari
lineages in the same samaj by marriage adds to the multiplicity of ties be-
tween the more and less powerful within the samaj as a whole, thereby in-

creasing its cohesion as a group.

136

From an interactional point of view, particularly with respect to local
politics and conflict resolution, relations between the sardari and non-
sardari lineages within the samaj have important implications for the analy-
sis of social organization in this part of East Bengal. As I have noted, the
primary raison d'etre of the samaj :h as an institution for the control of
conflict. When a dispute occurs between two villagers, be they of the same
village or not, one or both disputants may call upon several or all of the
sardars in the samaj group to constitute a kind of rural court - known as
salish - to hear and adjudicate the dispute. It is not necessary that the
sardars in question be from the reyai or reyais of the various disputants,
although not all the sardars of the samaj need to be called to sit on the
salish. This procedure means that a conflict in one reyai or village (sub-
units of the samaj grouping as a whole) can be and usually is "escaleted" to
involve members of the samaj from various villages. The settlement of dis-
putes in this manner is not the only legitimate means utilized in conflict
resolution, I hasten to point out. Very often villagers resort to litigation
in the government courts as well. Moreover, increasingly at the time of my
research, villagers were having resort to the union Council, an elected
local government body empowered to adjudicate local disputes. But when the
samaj is called upon as a means for conflict resolution, the initial actors
in a dispute situation are multiplied immediately and the territory over
which conflict may spread is automatically expanded.

A latent function of the samaj is that of regulation of relations among
the sardars, themselves representative usually of the dominant lineages in
their respective villages. This may be seen in the fact that, although
transferral of the mantle of sardari leadership normally proceeds from father

to eldest son, a man who has newly inherited this status must as a matter of

137

course cement his relations with the other sardars in the same samaj group-
ing. This is usually done with the formality of a dinner invitation. This
"courtesy" in effect gives the sardars some method of sanctioning admission
to their ranks, even though the man upon whom the position of sardar has
newly devolved is legitimately encumbent by virtue of inheritance. This is
a crucial factor in recruitment to sardari ranks, in that a man who wants to
be a sardar, and can establish some legitimacy to his claim as against that
of another, can build upon this by inviting sardars to dine, by promising
them support in the case of their personal needs, or otherwise inviegle them
into granting him the position of sardar. When conflict over the position of
sardari leadership in one given reyai or village takes place, all the sardars
in the samaj grouping are ipso facto involved. Here again, a purely local
conflict in one sub-unit of the samaj, by the very nature of the sardari sys-
tem of leadership, territorially extensive in expression, automatically esca-
lates to involve other groupings in the relevant territory.

The samaj and the system of sardari leadership displays important link-
ages to other samaj groupings as well as to official governmental bodies.
The extensiveness of social organization to include the market area as a rel-
evant unit can be seen here. There are 3 samaj groupings contiguous to Alir-
bazar. One of these, to the north of the market, is that to which Hajipur
and Tinpara belong, one lies to the west of the bazar and one to the south
of it. The affairs of the market are informally regulated by the sardars
of these 3 samaj groupings. That is, if some irregularity occurs in the mar-
ket - which as a central place for some 30 mauzas, is a kind of "neutral"
territory where no single samaj or reyai grouping holds sway - the relevant
sardars of the samaj groupings whose members may be involved in the matter

are called upon to help sort out the trouble. For example. there is no formal

138

allocation of places in the little market which meets twice weekly in Alir-
bazar. But over time the number of regular sellers - as Opposed to villagers
who casually come to sell when they have goods - has become stabilized and
every week during my stay the same individuals could be seen at the same
spots in the market. In the unlikely event that a newcomer usurps the custo-
mary place of a seller of longer precedence in the market, the resultant con-
flict would bring forth an attempt to mediate it by the sardars of the rele-
vant samaj groupings of which the disputants are members. As I have pointed
out, nearly all the sellers in Alirbazar are from the immediate surrounding
market area, which means that one or the other of the three samaj groupings
is likely to be involved in any dispute in the marketplace. For this reason,
the sardari system of conflict resolution and the regulation of local affairs
extends over and conforms to the market area, which fact further indicates
the importance of the market area as a basic socio-territorial unit in com-
munity organization.
Finally, the sardari system is linked of official local government bodies.
The Union, lowest tier in the Basic Democracies System of government promul-
gated by Ayub Khan in 1959, is itself an amalgam of mauzas, composed of elec—
toral wards which cross-cut the "natural" community sub-groupings I have attemp-
ted to describe. Each such "ward" elects a Basic Democrat to serve on the
Union Council, the ward in theory being so drawn as to cover representatively
a population of around 1,200. The composition of the Union Council to which
Hajipur and Tinpara had elected members reflects the bases of leadership that
I have outlined. Of 14 Basic Democrats in Islampur Union, 12 were Muslims and
of these, 9 were sardars or from sardari lineages, at the time of my research.
In recent years, as I have suggested, villagers have had increasing resort

to the Union Council as an agent of conflict resolution. I myself witnessed

139

several salish cases to which the union Council formally attended and was

told by its secretary that its members heard at official meetings some 75
cases a year and I know that they mediated unofficially in many others.
Mereover, the official government bodies reach down to the local level through
the Union Council, utilizing it as a means of administration and social con-
trol in the rural areas, as well as of implementation of certain kinds of
development projects. In cases of conflict which come to the attention of

the higher authorities, the Union Council is called upon to mediate and uti—

lizes the existing structure of power and influence in the area.

Example 14: Official Conflict Resolution in Rural Areas

In 1967 conflict broke out over some land in the Lalmai Hills which
the government had taken over to begin a reforestation project. Be-
cause the hills had been declared to be government prOpoerty, villa-
gers from outside the Alirbazar area had begun to come to the hills
and take thatch grass, which the government allowed. This was a mat-
ter of some annoyance to local peOple, in that over the years, prior
to the government take-over of the land, many farmers from the Alir-
bazar area had begun to farm and even reside in the hills (see Example
6). For despite the fact that the government reclamation had effec-
tively dispossessed them, they nonetheless resented the presence of
outsiders cutting valuable thatch grass in the hills. Some of the
outsiders so engaged were attacked by local people from 4 mauzas
comprising the samaj lying to the west of Alirbazar. As the outsid-
ers had in this instance been kinsmen of, and invited by, a local man,
the latter brought the case to the relevant samaj grouping and its
sardar leaders. The sardars, however, were inclined to protect local
interests and fined the complaintant for having allowed outsiders to
encroach on local prOperty.

The complaintant, insensed, appealed the case to official authority
in the person of the Sub-divisional Officer, which official has di-
rect supervisory powers over the Union Councils. word went out from
his office to the Chairman of the Islampur Union Council to settle
the matter. This was done as a salish meeting in late October of
1967, to which were convened the local sardars who had made the ori-
ginal decision. The conflict was adjudicated by reducing the fine,
but warning the complaintant that he had better forewarn others be-
fore inviting outsiders into the area to take thatch grass.

The reyai/samaj complex and the sardari system of rural leadership are

thus bound up with official organs of government, feeding personnel into

140

them and at the same time relating symbiotically with formal and official
institutuions as a kind of local power structure with which the former must
be linked in order to be effective at the local level.

Political organization, then, reflects the general patterns of organi-
zation which are seen in the manifestations of economics, kinship and reli-
gion in Hajipur and Tinpara. Firstly, the homestead cluster, a kind of pop-
ulation micro-nucleate, centered around one or more dominant lineages, and
characterized by a high degree of mutual interaction between homesteads,
gives rise to the formalized grouping known as reyai. Where several home-
stead clusters are sufficiently close to each other as to extend the inter-
action process to include all the homesteads in question, as in Hajipur,
the several reyais are socially recognized as belonging to the same "village"
(gram). The social reality of both reyai and village groupings is given con-
tent by individual and collective activities which take place within their
territorial confines. But collective activities are in turn centered around
those particular families whose members are able and disposed to organize
them and, where necessary, provide the facilities, both physical and finan-
cial, for them, as in the case of religious occasions discussed above. In
short, the social reality of local groupings in this part of East Bengal is
at least partially dependent upon the political and social leadership which
"naturally" evolves from those lineages whose relative size and wealth give
them a basis to exercise it and to be formally acknowledge for so doing. In
the next chapter I shall discuss in more detail the relvance of competition
between sardari lineages to the differing internal structures of Hajipur and
Tinpara. Suffice it to say here, by way of summary, that the sardari lineages
constitute the central focus around which small, localized groupings are for-

mally organized and retain some kind of permanence over time.

141

Secondly, however, consistent with the territorial extensiveness other
aspects of rural social organization exhibit, formal political organization
in these villages reflects the structural interdependence of the various
social groupings in a situation of dense and numerous papulation whose group
boundaries are visibly diffuse. Under the ecological conditions I have des-
cribed, there occurs the formal extension of social and political relations
to territorially wider_groupings than that of the reyai and village. This,
then, gives rise to the samaj as a formal political grouping, whose manifest
function is to adjudicate disputes, and whose latent function is to channel
relations among the powerful sardari lineages in a given grouping. This
"multi—tiered" and territorially expansive organizational form thus reflects
local social structure and, with the common representation of sardars and
sardari lineages on elected governing bodies such as the Union Council, the
linkage between the rural "power structure" and that represented by the modern
Pakistani state is effectively accomplished. In addition to the ecological
factors which underly this ensemble of organizations, however, certain his-

torical factors have also contributed to its emergence.

History, Ecology and Social Structure
The origins of Villages Hajipur and Tinpara as distinct social groupings

lie in a complex of factors, as these chapters, perhaps belabored, have attemp-
ted to show. The demographic history of the villages which I have been par-
tially able to reconstruct, reflects a process of immigration, population
increase and family fission as basic to the original settlement of the area.
The long run development of a sense of community solidarity seems related in
part to this purely demographic phenomenon, as well as to the pattern of rural
settlement I have discussed. Also important in the development of community

in this part of Bengal is the localization of political influence at is base

142

in such small groupings as that which the reyai represents.

At the same time, I have attempted to show that the intensiveness of
such small groupings has its limits and that opposite, and complementary, pro-
cesses result in the extension of social ties and the extensiveness of rural
institutions in such a way as to preclude the possibility that the "village"
as socially defined be the major relevant unit of social organization. Thus,
the samaj and the market area are basic components of rural social structure.
And I have tried to show that social stratification as well as patterns of
political power and influence correspond to these basic patterns of organi-
zation which evolve from the area's cultural ecology.

But it is appropriate further to sketch out the historical conditions
attendant on this general process. I want to suggest that these organization-
al forms seem to have come about not solely as a result of the mere facts of
human adaptation to a deltaic environment and a monsoon climate under certain
technological conditions, but that historical conditions further allowed the
process to take this particular course.

The villages of Comilla thana seem to have been under relatively ineffec-
tive control from urban centers until comparatively recent times. I have
noted that prior to Partition, much of the Comilla thana area was part of the
Chakla Roshnabad zamindari estate. While the estate's revenue collection sys-
tem as I have earlier outlined it seems to have been formally quite elaborate,
this does not necessarily mean that the landlords and their agents exercised
pervasive influence on the village areas which constituted their revenue do-
main. Indeed, there is little in the accounts of the Tripura Rajas that I
have seen to suggest that, beyond the collection of revenue, the Rajas con-
cerned themselves with much else in the villages. In this regard they seem
to have been typical, at least in the 19th and 20th Centuries, of samindars

elsewhere in Bengal.

143

As is well known, the Permanent Settlement of 1793 envisaged not merely
a revenue collection role for the zamindars, but also one in which these land-
lords in perpetuo would also carry on certain other functions of rural admini-
stration and social control. As Rahman (1962: 103-104) notes, the Permanent
Settlement not only made the samindars the "sole lessees of land in Bengal,"
but further required them to be "responsible for maintaining village peace as
well." However, by the 1870's the latter responsibility was judged Openly to
have been conspicuously unfulfilled. The Bengal Administration Report of
1871, cited by Rahman (1962: 104-105) and Tepper (1966: 45) lamented the fact
that-while such expectations of the zamindars were being met in other pro-
vinces, in Bengal the performance of functions other than those of revenue
collection were "entirely absent," and that "British authority (was) brought
less home to the peOple" and "the rich (were) less restrained and the poor
and weak less protected than elsewhere." The results of recent research on
the Mughal revenue collection system in Bengal, onto which the British grafted

their own notions of proper and effective rural "public administration,‘ show

in retrospect at least that this should not have been surprising.26
In a manner typical of these general problems of colonial administration,
it appears that the Rojas of Tripura engaged in very little "interference"
in local affairs in Chakla Roshnabad once rents were paid. Thus, until the
1870's at least, when the British began to intervene more directly in the po-
licing of rural areas all over Bengal, there was apparently little direct con-
tact between the inhabitants of the countryside and the ruling colonial power
(Rahman 1962: 103-109; Tepper 1966: 43-45; Webster 1920: 74-77). Moreover,
the Chakla Roshnabad estate was far less subinfeudated than were other

zamindaris in Bengal and Cumming (1899: 3Sff), who conducted the last thorough

revenue survey of the area, reported that nearly 90 percent of the cultivators

144

owned their own land and paid their taxes directly to the Rajas' agents.

In this situation, then, it seems likely that the organization of the
rural areas of the estate evolved in a manner relatively uninfluenced by ex—
ternal, more powerful, authority, and the localization of social influence
and political power seems naturally to have centered on those lineages and
families to which others would concede leadership. These tended to be the
lineages in each reyai or village grouping whose members were.among the first
settlers or who came successively over generations to amass the larger col-
lective land holdings in their respective bailiwicks. Examples 1 and 3 in
my discussion of the process of settlement indicate that the revenue collec-
tion system in the estate - the practice of granting the status_of ijaradar
and tahsildar to local, early inhabitants - contributed in individual cases
to the development of social structure in that it allowed such families to
gain land, or control of it, and hence subsequent increased power and in-
fluence.

Thus, in the various homestead clusters and groups of them one or more
lineages.became dominant and their leadership in matters pertaining to their
respective groups as a whole came to be formally acknowledged. The long
term result of such intensive localization of social and political activity
in small scale units seems to have mitigated against any process which would
have led to the formation of formally centralized authority vested in such a

personage as a "village headman,"

as found elsewhere in Bengal and other
parts of the Sub-continent. This has meant in the long run that the kinds
of vertical cleavages and their potential for factional conflict between
groups led by men of roughly equivalent status and power, so common in South

Asian villages (see Nicholas 1967), were never off-set in this part of Bengal

by formal and powerful ties which criss-crossed territorially and socially

145

bounded nucleates which are described as "villages" in other parts of the
world.

But if social organization never really coalesced at the "village"
level, it does not mean that ties to larger organizational entities did not
extend themselves, as much of what I have outlined above attempts to show
in some detail. Thus, in complementary opposition to the intensive quality
of social relations such as those which the homestead cluster, the reyai
and the "village" as socially defined all engender, there is the counter-
vailing tendency toward social and territorial extensiveness as seen in the
samaj as a political institution and the market area as a prime organizational
nexus. Mbreover, in a situation of papulation increase, deteriorating economic
fortunes and relative lack of direct external control, it seems quite reason—
able to hypothesize that as the need for mutual self-help and social control
especially as land holdings became increasingly fragmented and scattered, that
rural social institutions would tend to extend themsevles beyond the smaller
units. Hence, the amalgamation of various reyais into wider samaj groupings
covering a number of contiguous mauzas seems to have developed in a manner
consistent with the extension of other kinds of ties: those of kinship as
well as dyadically contractual and functionally specific interaction, as re-
flected in patterns of rural credit and labor exchange.

Contemporary social organization in Comilla thana, then, has resulted
from the confluence of a particular ecology with a particular history. The
adaptation of an increasingly dense population to a deltaic monsoon environ-
ment under preindustrial technological conditions produced a scattered settle-
ment pattern coupled with excessive fragmentation of decreasingly small land
holdings. These conditions in turn may be related to the gradual extension

of social ties over wide areas, concommitant with an evolving rural class

146

structure which gave organization its underlying content if not its overt form.
And it seems natural that marketplaces, as central places where both economic
exchange and social interaction for individuals resident in ordinarily dis-
persed social groupings, would become the nexi of overlap for these smaller
entities. Finally, however, given the fact that the intervention of the state
was administratively and politically quixotic, never consistent in its impact
over time, it is not surprising that local solutions to commonplace political
problems of conflict and its redress would fall to those upon whom these
natural social processes were to bestow power at any point in time. The ques-
tion as to how this indigneous organization will now be merged with the modern-
izing and increasingly pervasive Pakistani state is at the heart of the not-so-

quiet crisis on the delta of East Bengal today.

Part II

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

AND

SOCIAL PROCESS

147

CHAPTER VIII

FUSION AND FISSION IN THE POLITICS OF THE SARDARI SYSTEM

Part I of this thesis has been primarily concerned with an analytical
description of social organization and social structure in two East Bengali
"villages." The-reyai, village and samaj groupings whose forms I have out?
lined are seen here as simple formal organization. At the same time, I
have attempted to relate these forms to social structure - by which I have
meant "class relations" - and further to show how social structure is related
to ecological adaptation of a dense pOpulation to a deltaic, monsoon environ-
ment.

I have reserved a somewhat detailed discussion of politics in Hajipur
and Tinpara for several reasons. Firstly, in the process of my research,
politics became its particular interest and focus. Although very early in
my stay in the area I was aware of territorially extensive and "multi-tiered"
social organizational forms, I did not really begin to understand something
of their workings until I had heard about, witnessed and recorded the speci-
fically political events I am about to relate. Secondly, and more important
for the analysis at hand, I think that politics serves as an apt subject for
demonstrating social processes. Description thus far, largely organizational
and structural in emphasis, has been perforce something of an abstraction,
which is at once the prerogative and the problem of the outside observer of
a social system in attempting to relate the relevant facts. The inevitable
risk in such a discussion is that of leaving the impression of stasis. I

wish now to convey something of the dynamic which "makes the system work."

148

149

I have tried to show that the reyai, village and samajgroupings build
somewhat logically into one another to form a holistic social - and politi-
cal - unit and that relations between various samaj groupings and their sub-
units are further elaborated in the larger "market area." It should be ob-
‘vious that territorial extensiveness and institutional linkages do not end
‘here. The "market area" is not a bounded unit of social organization in
East Pakistan; the reyai, village and samaj as socially defined are "bounded,"
but also permeable, and the "market area" is geographically bounded, but by
no means restricted as an interactional locus. Thus, I have chosen these
as the focus of description and analysis, with no intent to portray them as
being strictly "systemically bounded."

In a purely political context, it is useful to conceive of the reyai,
village, samaj and market area as arenas, in the sense that Bailey (1963: 224-
226) has used the term analytically to denote the boundaries of groups, gov—
erned by norms, customs and values, with and/or between which conflict may
take place. It should by now be obvious, as it is in Bailey's conceptualiza-
tion, that these arenas are interlocked. In this chapter I shall attempt to
show the manner in which events in one arena may "escalate" to include persons,
groups, and territory of another one - or, under circumstances, how this may
be prevented from occurring. Moreover, I shall continue to relate process
as reflected in events to social structure, as reflected in the relations among
dominant sardari lineages in different reyai and village groupings, as well
as those which take place between them and non-dominant lineages.

I begin with a brief summary of the background of conflict in Hajipur,
Tinpara and their neighboring reyai and village groupings in the samaj. Much
of the material presented will be in the form of "cases," as defined in Chap-

ter 1, followed by an analysis of them.

150

The Samaj and Twenty Years of Conflict
The samaj to which Hajipur and Tinpara belong consists, as I have said,
of 8 mauzas, in which 14 sardars formally exercise leadership in their respec-
tive reyais. These are:
Hajipur: a mauza and village, with 3 reyais, 3 sardars
Imamgaon: a mauza, with one reyai in its northern para and two-sardars;
the homesteads in its southern para are part of Tinpara reyai/
village
Radhapur: a mauza, whose northern para is part of Tinpara, where also
lies the homestead of one of Tinpara's sardars; one homestead
in the western para-part of Reshampur (mauza, reyai/village)

Rampur: a mauza, part of Tinpara, with one sardar

Monogram: mauza contiguous to Hajipur, its homesteads part of Hajipur's
Reyai I

Reshampur: mauza and regal/village; separate from Hajipur and Tinpara
Zindapur: mauza with 3 reyais and 3 sardars, comprises one village

Amirnagar: a mauza with 2 reyais and 2 sardars, comprises one village

I have briefly described the ideal role of the samaj as-a "Council of
Elders" in the mediation of disputes. But throughout my entire period of con-
tact with these villages I heard continual lamenting of the fact that the
sardari system of conflict resolution had "broken down," that it had "gone
bad" and that the samaj had "been destroyed" (samfij nasta hoygéla). Indeed,
there was to my knowledge only one meeting of the sardars to mediate a dispute
during the whole time of my stay, despite continual conflict in the villages.

In this connection, I should delineate two kinds of conflict as I observed
them. Firstly, there is what I might call "atomistic" conflict, involving
two or more individuals but which does not generate the formation of opposing

groups in concerted action. Such conflict is endemic, occurring at all levels

151

of organization - the household, the homestead, the reyai, the village and
between men from different villages. Usually it involves competitive striv-
ing toward specific, often narrowly material goals, as in the case of dis?
putes over land. The resolution of such conflict can take privately, in a
settlement between the individuals involved - or, for that matter in a situa-
tion of the "zero-sum" game, in which one can only win.what the other loses.
It is often resolved, especially in the case of land disputes, through re-
course to costly litigation in the courts. It may occasionally be settled
through mediation either by the samaj or, importantly, the Union Council.
Secondly, there is factional conflict, by which I mean conflict groups
coalesced around one or more leaders. The goals in such conflict are diffuse
and may involve to a high degree such material intangibles as prestige. Or
they may arise from situations of initially "atomistic" conflict, over speci-
fic competitions, in which one or the other of the disputants involved attempts
to generate support for his "cause." When this occurs, the entire heritage
of disputes, as we shall see in a case to be presented below, may be quickly
dredged up from the past. Whatever may be the "efficient cause" of a given
case of factional conflict, I know of none which did not involve locally
powerful and prestigiousmen, most of the members of the dominant lineages and
sardars. Finally, factional conflict takes place at the level of the reyai,
the village, and the samaj and can involve all three levels of organization at
one time, encompassing a wide area. In so doing, it results in the solidifying
of some groups, and the splitting up and rearranging of others, thereby injec-
ting a great deal of fluidity and insecurity into the whole system, allowing
no grouping to be perceived as permanent, no institution to be seen as inher-

ently stable. Perhaps this is why the villagers I know spoke continually of

152

the "break down" of the sardari system, and self-effacedly decry the malice
(hingsha) felt, perhaps exaggeratedly, to be omnipresent in the villages.

I shall attempt to illustrate this process by first relating the histor-
ical background of samaj conflict and then, through an analysis of case mater-
ial, to relate conflict to social structure and process in the villages under
discussion.

Some 20 years prior to my arrival, the samaj in the area studied was
shaken by the inability of the sardars from the 8 constituent mauzas to agree
on the proper settlement of two disputes. The first of these involved disa-
greement over whom should succeed to the sardarship in one of the constituent

reyais and the second concerned the settling of a marital dispute.

Case 1, Part A

In mauza and village Amirnagar, one of the sub-units of the samaj (see
Map 5), there are two reyais, one of which is headed by a wealthy lin-
eage with the title of Mahisan. In the middle 1940's, the sardar be-
longing to this lineage died. The man had had two wives (not polygy-
nously) and his patrimony was to be divided among the two sets of sib—
lings by each of his unions. Each set of siblings was headed by a
male, Gani Mia, the eldest by the first wife, and Karim Mia, the eldest
by the second wife. The eldest of the two half-brothers, Gani Mia, for
reasons which were unclear to my informants, agreed to waive a certain
portion of his inheritance and allow it to go to his half-brother,
Karim Mia. As is customary, the eldest son of the deceased sardar,
Gani Mia, inherited the sardarship of his father, and perhaps he gave
up part of his inheritance to forestall any attempt by his half-broth-
er, Karim Mia, to dispute the succession to the sardarship. Karim Mia
took the portion of the inheritance which his elder half-brother had
granted him and there the rather simple matter appeared to rest for
some time.

Several years later, Karim Mia had a dream in which he saw himself con-
structing a mosque as an example of his piety and fidelity to the canons
of Islam. As often happens in such things, he took his dream experience
as a divine mandate to build a mosque and undertook shortly thereafter

to construct the building. He prevailed on his half-brother, Gani Mia,
to help with the building costs and in addition to donate an acre of land
which would be used for the upkeep of the mosque. Gani Mia refused to

do so, saying that he had, after all, given up part of his inheritance
and thus needed all of his land to support his own family. He finally,
however, under continued pressure, agreed to give one kani (.40 acre) of

153

land to the cause. Karim Mia, was, nonetheless, not satisfied with
this amount.

Either seeking revenge out of pique with his half-brother or seizing
upon the Opportunity to advance himself, Karim Mia began to prevail up-
on the sardars of the samaj to remove Gani Mia from the position, jus-
tifying this demand on the grounds that Gani Mia had displayed irreli-
gious behavior in a manner ill-befitting a sardar, thereby demeaning
the collective prestige Of all the sardars in the samaj. The key ally
of Karim Mia in this effort was Fazar Ali of Hajipur's Munshi lineage,
with whom Karim Mia is reputed to have had illegitimate land dealings.
As I have noted in Example 10 (Chapter 5), Fazar Ali is said to have
used his position as an accountant and tahsildar of the Tripura Rajas
to sell away khas or "public" lands to those who would reward him for
such assistance. With the influence of Fazar Ali, himself a sardar,
Karim Mia succeeded in getting the other sardars to demand that Gani
Mia allocate the requested acre as waqf’or mosque land. Gani Mia re-
sisted the pressure of his peers and in so doing made the whole matter
a prestige issue. After some time, the other sardars in the samaj uni-
tedly stripped Gani Mia of his sardarship and transferred it to Karim
Mia. One of the methods whereby Gani Mia was to be deprived of his
claim to be a sardar was that of refusal to invite him to sit at salish
meetings and to dine with the other sardars on the formal occasions for
which invitations are issued, such as weddings.

Several years later, a second major distrubance took place involving

the entire samaj. This time the venue of conflict was mauza and vil-
lage Zindapur (see Map 5) where a man had divorced his wife and then
soon afterward remarried her before the amount of time required by
orthodox Islamic law in such cases had elapsed.~ While it is a compar-
atively simple matter, at least traditionally, for a man to divorce

his wife, remarrying her is a rather lengthy process.27 The couple in
Zindapur did not comply with the complicated procedures required and,
for this lack of compliance the husband in question received the cen-
sure Of his fellow villagers who called upon the samaj formally to re-
buke him. He resisted, saying that either out of ignorance Of the law
or out of some obscure legal point that would have justified his action,
that his behavior had been correct. The samaj met in its entirety, in-
viting in addition two locally respected maulanas, who are regarded as
theological and legal experts, to help decide the case. There apparent-
ly ensued a long debate and discussion.which came to no conlusion or
agreeemtn (to the best of my knowledge the "illegal" rcmarriage remained
intact). The long-term effect of this incident, as that Of the succes-
sion of sardarship in Amirnagar (above) was the aligning of the sardars
in opposing factions.

It will be noted that these events had the effect of "escalating" the con-
flict, to which I have earlier referred. That is, two individual events, occur-
ring among members of one lineage in one case and in a single household in the

other, set in motion the leadership of larger groupings over an area much

154

wider in territory than that of the individual reyais and villages to which
the disputants in each case belonged. The effects of this "escalation" in'
including other groupings ultimately had repurcussions in all the constituent

reyais and villages in the samaj.

Case 1, Part B

Although the decision to replace Gani Mia with Karim in Amirnagar was
said by some informants to be unanimous, Others who had been close to
the scene Of events or part of them stated to me that the samaj did
suffer long-lasting internal enmities as a result. In Hajipur, all
the sardars were in agreement with the decision to give the position
to Karim Mia, who, as I have noted, enlisted the support Of Fazar Ali
in his effort to unseat his half-brother. But the aftermath of the
Zindapur divorce incident left permanent division in Hajipur. At the
time Of these events there were only two reyais in Hajipur, that Of
Fazar Ali, which is still intact, and which I have identified as Reyai
III. The other, and much larger reyai was led jointly by the Mahisans
and the Majumdars of Hajipur. These two_lineages' leaders took Oppo-
site sides of the issue in the divorce case from that of Fazar Ali and
thus increased hostility between the Munshis on the one hand and the
Majumdars and the Mahisans on the other.

In Tinpara, which was then as now a regal/village grouping whose meme
bers acknowledged the leadership of two sardars, the latter were in
disagreement regarding the divorce. One of them, Pradhan Ali, the most
powerful individual in the village, felt that the rcmarriage had not
been prOper, while the other sardar, Tara Gazi, was of the opinion that
it had been correct in procedure. The two had been, moreover, opposed
over the Amirnagar incident, Pardhan Ali supporting Gani Mia, while

Tara Gazi was an advocate of the case of Karim Mia. Neither Of these

disagreements, however, resulted in a permanent cleavage in Tinpara.

The subsequent two decades in the two villages saw intermittent conflict
involving the major sardari lineages. Relations between the Munshi and the
Majumdar families deteriorated during a succession of land disputes between
them. After Independence and Partition, Fazar Ali lost his position as
tahsildar in the zamindari abolition of 1950 and the sequisure of the estate
by the Government of Pakistan, although at the time I knew him, he still main-
tained his position as clerk in the Office that dealt with the remainder of

the legal work connected with the estate.

155

In Tinpara, several land disputes ensued in which most of the homesteads
in the village were in one_way or another involved. In all the cases Of
‘which I was able to learn, groups seemed to coalesce around the two sardari
lineages. That of Tara Gazi, however, gradually declined in influence as it
grew progressively larger in population while at the same time failed to gain
land in any appreciable measure. At the time Of my stay, members of this
lineage were involved in few creditor activities. Meanwhile, Pradhan Ali,
the last surviving male in his own homestead, with no sons, retained not only
the substantial holding his father and grandfather had built up over two gen-
erations, but also was able to increase there, by nearly a third according
to his own account. Factional conflict in Tinpara in the 1950's seems to
have involved the attempts by Pradhan-Ali to gain land in the area and to
thwart the efforts of two "middle peasant" families in this respect. In one
instance, Pradhan Ali supported the claims of "poor peasant" families against

that of Fazlur Rahman, one of the village's "middle peasants,‘ in a long and
costly litigation over the houseplot and homestead seedling plots left by a
deceased member of the village.

Thus, conflict in Hajipur seems to have been a matter of petty disputes
among the three sardari lineages. Of these, the Mahisans gained consistent
prominence while the Majumdars and Munshis alternately quarrelled and united
against the Mahisans in various disputes. In Tinpara, the gradual eclipse of

the Tara Gazi sardari lineage took place, while Pradhan Ali maintained a posi-

tion of prominence in village affairs.

Case 1, Part C

In 1964, the Amirnagar sardari again surfaced, this time with the sons
Of the original protagonists as the major figures. Junab Ali, the son
of Gani Mia, with the consent of his brothers, decided to give the .40
acre his father had once promised as waqf’land for the Amirnagar mosque

156

and thus clear the disgraced name of his late father. With this de-
cision, he was in a position to claim the title of sardar, of which

his father had been deprived, and he did so, over the Objection of Ali
Ajjam, the son of Karim Mia. This occasioned yet another meeting Of
the samaj, which reopened the wound first dealt it by the earlier phase
in the long conflict. In the samaj villages once again this escalted
conflict and repurcussions.

In Hajipur it resulted in the splitting of the reyai led by the Mahisans

and the Majumdars into the two which existed in the village at the time

Of my stay. The Mahisans were invited to a ceremonial meal by Ali Ajjam

and in the end were inclined to support him. The Majumdars supported

Junab Ali as did the Munshis. Junab Ali was reinstated, against the

opposition of only two sardars, Zafar Ali Mahisan Of Hajipur and the

leader Of another Mahisan family in Zindapur. The opposition of these

two earned for them the hostility of all the other sardars and threats

were made to the effect that these two would be boycotted, denied cere-

monial invitations to dine, the usual slight to prestige which is employed.

But while the second round of the Amirnagar affair brought the fluid

inter-sardari politics of Hajipur to a boil, in Tinpara, where Pradhan

Ali's dominance had been assured, the support Of both him and Tara Gazi

went to Junab Ali with no reported incident.

This general history of the conflict serves to throw light on the segmen-
tation in Hajipur as Opposed to its lack in Tinpara. The existence of three
relatively wealthy lineages, in competition for power, whose continual latent
hostility has been aroused periodically by events of the sort that I have re-
lated, has assured that reyai organization in the village remains at least
symbolically strong. The attempt to demonstrate influence symbolically is most
manifest at weddings, where the custom of limited invitation to the ceremony
and feast is practiced with scrupulous attention to protocol. Tinpara, which
has seen the consistent domination of a single lineage during the past 15 years
has no vertical segmentation. Conflict in that village is horizontally struc-
tured, with "middle peasants" in occasional conflict with the dominant Pradhan
Ali. Serious conflict in both villages always involves the rich and high
status lineages, but its particular forms and cleavages differ in each case.

In Hajipur the line of cleavage is between the competing sardari lineages. In

Tinpara, only one man, with the preponderant share of the village's landed

wealth, is able to maintain his position against any individual or groups

157

competing with him.

Case 2

In 1965 a village cooperative society was formed in Hajipur under the
auspices of the Pakistan Academy for Rural DevelOpment. The son of
Fazar Ali, Monu Mia, was one of the founders, as were some of the
younger and better educated members of the Majumdar family and the

young school teacher, Hakim Ali, of the Kobiraj homestead. Hakim Ali
was elected to the post of Manager28 and the other various Official
posts were filled by the younger members of the three sardari lineages.
In two subsequent annual elections, while individual personnel in these
posts rotated to some degree, the control of the cooperative remained
substantially in the hands of the sardari lineages, with the interes-
ting exception Of the prominence Of another young and articulate school
teacher, a Hindu of the nearby resident Debonath (jugi weaver) family
and a young and enterprising member of the Barber (Hindu caste) family
whose homestead lies just south of Hajipur's mauza boundaries. In the
third election, Monu Mia, of the Munshi lineage, was elected Manager

and he was the encumbent in that position when I arrived to do field
work in Hajipur in late 1966. I have earlier noted the distrust with
which the Munshi family had come to be regarded and the fact that in

the summer of 1967 Monu Mia was accused by the Mahisans of having ab-
sconded with COOperative members' savings (Example 10, Chapter 5). The
key mover in this accusation was Abdul Ali Mahisan, nephew of "rich
peasant" Anwar Ali (see Example 9, Chapter 5), a man of sufficient edu-
cation to be just literate, but possessed Of considerable organizing
skill. In the cooperative election of 1967, Monu Mia was voted out of
office by a great majority and Abdul Ali replaced him as Manager. The
weekly meeting place Of the little society was shifted from the Majumdar
homestead to that of the Mahisans, where most other collective activities
in Hajipur also center. Abdul Ali then proceeded with methodical deter-
mination to increase the membership in the society. The cooperative

had begun in 1965 with a membership of 11 and, at the time of my arrival
nearly 2 years later, had increased to 26.. As Manager, Abdul Ali under-
took a personal, homestead-to-homestead campaign to increase membership
and by the end of the summer had nearly doubled the membership list from
what it had been at the time of his accession to the Manager's post.

Several factors outside Abdul Ali's control doubtless contributed to his
success in building the cooperative. The rise in membership in Hajipur
coincides with a generally large increase in membership in similar soci-
eties throughout the thana that year due to the constant drive by those
in charge of the Comilla experiment to increase membership. 0f particu-
lar importance is the fact that there had been great interest in the
demonstrated usefulness of the deep tube well, an innovation of great
consequence which the Central COOperative Association, under whose aegis
village cooperatives had been in existence for a period of 6 years, had
begun to introduce with gradual success. During the summer Of my stay
in the thana, excitement over the tubewell and the possibilities of Ob-
taining one through cooperative formation and membership had begun to
catch the enthusiasm of rural cultivators who faced, as had all previous

158

generations of their forebearers, a long dry season with little chance
of growing any crop whatsoever. Abdul Ali was himeself interested in
getting a tubewell for the village and, knowing that the bestowal of
this resource was dependent on demonstration of a strong cooperative
society with good leadership and a record of conforming to the "rules
of cooperation" as laid down by the Central Association, he was able
to use the tubewell as a "selling point" to a number of villagers who
had heretofore not been members.

Abdul Ali was also able to capitalize on the fact that, with the re-
moval of Monu Mia from the post of Manager, some of the younger members
Of populous, but poor, lineages whose dealings with the Munshis had
left them distrustful, were now willing to join. It must be added that
Abdul Ali engaged in an admirable "door-to-door" campaign throughout
the summer, persuading villagers to join. Moreover, he also spent some
of his time attempting to organiza a cooperative in Reshampur, to the
south of Hajipur, although this effort was initially unsuccessful.

When asked about his zeal in performing these activities, Abdul Ali
would inevitably repeat the develOpmental goals and ideology Of cooper—
ation with which the Comilla cooperative movement is imbued and I have
no particular reason to doubt his personal sincerity in responding in
this manner. It is, however, worthy of note the shift in cooperative
leadership to the Mahisan lineage in Hajipur as a village, in particur
lar its ascendency over the Munshi lineage, in that with the removal

of Monu Mia from the Manager's position, no member of the Munshi family
was left occupying a post of the Managing Committee. Cooperative meet-
ings I attended during this period sometimes reflected the universal
hostility felt by members toward MOnu Mia. Abdul Ali, addressing the
group about "past failures" and future goals, on several occasions re-
ferred to the incumbency of his predecessor with disdain, calling the
"culprit" sarcastically "our friend Monu" (amader bandhu Manu) with an
irony that appeared not to be lost on those present. (Monu Mia and his
brother did remain in the society, but with greatly diminished influence.)

Abdul Ali's zeal in recruiting members was matched by his ability (aided
by several key supporters, notably the young Hindus I have mentioned)

in enforcing the heretofore laxly followed rules of the cooperative move~
ment. It is a principle of the Comilla system that all members.must
attempt to save whatever money they can weekly, depositing these sav-
ings with the Manager who is entrusted to bring them to the Central Co-
operative bank. This rule is ideally to be enforced by the fining or
ultimate expulsion of members who do not save, for the idea behind the
saving is to make the individual villager solvent enough to be able to
borrow money from cooperative sources or, for that matter, governmental
ones. Another rule of the movement is that of regular attendance at
meetings, failure to do so being also punishable by fines. By December
of 1967, just at the end of my stay in the villages, Abdul Ali had suc-
ceeded in pushing through a resolution in the cooperative to the effect
that these rules would in fact be enforced by the fines. Also in Decem-
ber there occurred an incident in which the claim of the Majumdar line-
age to any prerogatives in leadership in the cooperative - and perhaps
in the affairs of the village generally — was, at least for the time
being, denied.

159 ,

At the time of increased growth in the Hajipur cooperative, a young
man belonging to the Majumdar lineage, Ershak Mia, was to be married.
He was the son of Tafat Ali, the wealthiest of the Majumdars, a "rich
creditor" who leases out nearly one-third of his land holdings. Tafat
Ali is not sardar, however, that position having devolved upon his
patrilateral parallel cousin, Kala Mia.

Young Ershak had been active in the COOperative from its early days,
and, as he was in training at a local madrassa to become an imam, he
had been given the job Of literacy training in Hajipur as part of the
cooperative's participation in the "adult education" program Of the
Comilla experiment. Ershak was to be married in another part of the
thana. Perhaps because of his sense of loyalty to the cOOperative
and of solidarity with his fellow members, he wanted to invite all
the cooperative members to his wedding. SO determined was his desire
to do so that he went ahead with formal invitations to the members
without consulting his father.

Upon hearing that such invitations, which crossed reyai lines due to
the village-inclusive character of cooperative membership, Old Tafat
Ali was incensed. This procedure was improper, he declared, for it
contradicted the principle of "regal-invitation only" to weddings.
To contravene this rule was to threaten the honor of the reyai and
particularly of the sardari lineage by denying their ceremonial pre-
rogatives in an important social affair.

Kala Mia, the sardar, was inclined to agree with his cousin, but the
fact that his own son was on the Managing Committee (as "Model Farmer")
and had been so since the society's inception put him on the horns of

a dilemma; on the one hand there was a threat to the traditional prero-
gative of the reyai and its sardar, yet on the other hand the member-
ship of his son and nephew in the cooperative represented key partici-
pation of the lineage's members in an all—village groupings.

Tafat Ali, however, was adamant and went so far as to insist that the
other sardars in the samaj be consulted. So they were and the appar-
ently unanimous agreement was in favor of Tafat Ali's position. Thus,
the invitations to the cooperative members had to be withdrawn, much
to the chagrin of Ershak.Mia. (His wedding took place as planned, but
the sole members of Hajipur village to attend were those of his own
lineage.)

The day after the withdrawal of the invitations by Ershak, the cooper-
ative met at the Mahisans' homestead, as usual under the leadership of
Abdul Ali. Members were indignant about the withdrawal of the invita-
tions and were in a mood to "punish" Ershak Mia and other members of
his lineage for the affront the whole affair had been to the coopera-
tive. As Abdul Ali himself put it, summing up their case, not only
had some of the Majumdars been bad members, not brining their savings
to the cooperative and not attending regularly, but they had insulted
the members Of the group.r "How," queried Abdul Ali rhetorically, "could
the society take this blow to its prestigeT' Surely if the affair were
allowed to stand the honor of the society would not last! (sdmitite

160

ijjat thdkbe n5). The members agreed and suggestions were heard as

to the fitting punishment. It was finally decided to fine Ershak a
sum of Rs. 30 and further to fine his brother Rs. 20 for having aided
and abetted the elders of the lineage in revoking the invitations
Ershak had initially extended. The two had no choice but to acquiesce;
Ershak paid the fine, but his brother refused and subsequently drOpped
out of the COOperative.

In January of 1968 the Hajipur cooperative society held its fourth
round of elections to its Managing Committee. None of the members
belonging to the Majumdar lineage was elected to it, although the son
of the Majumdar's sardar, Kala Mia, stood as a candidate for the posi-
tion of "Model Farmer" which he had held since the inception of the
cooperative. In his place was elected a member of one Of the poorer
lineages in the village and the new Managing Committee further was
comprised of new members from "middle peasant" families who had not
previously belonged. Although Abdul Ali was reelected as Manager,
this election marked the first decline in dominance of the Managing
Committee by members of all three dominant sardari lineages; the two
Hindu members who had always been active in the cOOperative were elec-
ted, one as Chairman. Thus, the new leadership in the COOperative
represented the latest constellation of forces in the village as a
whole, with the Mahisan lineage at the center, the Munshi lineage min-
imally represented both in membership and on the Managing Committee,
the Majumdras in retreat from participation in any significant way.

Case 2 provides insight into the village level of organization, as rep-
resented by the inclusive character Of cooperative membership. I have noted
that, whatever the complex of his motivations may have been, Abdul Ali's suc-
cess in increasing memebership had the effect of formally centralizing an
all-village activity around his lineage, that Of the Mahisans. This was
merely one more collective village activity that focussed around the Mahisan
lineage, which, at least during the time of my stay in the area, was the most
powerful single group of families there. The action of the cOOperative was
taken in Opposition to decisions made at the sub-village reyai "level" in one
quarter and in retaliation against that decision despite the fact that it was
supported by the samaj, the (traditionally) authoritative multi-village insti-
tution to which Hajipur is formally linked. The cooperative's response to
the incident of Ershak Mia's wedding shows under what conditions the village -

as Opposed to the reyai and the samaj - can exist politically as an "intervening"

161

unit of organization between these two formal groupings. The conditions, fur—
thermore, which permit the village to come into focus as an important grouping
or "level of organization" depend, in addition to the ecological factors I
have cited, on the existence of a lineage which dominates in such a manner as
to create a kind of organizational clustering which crosses reyai lines. Thus,
for Ershak Mia, the contradiction lay in the sets of obligations he held to
two groups, one formed on a principle of exclusiveness, the other on that of
inclusiveness; the former asserted his primary kinship and reyai group member-
ship in contrast to the latter, which called upon his ties to a "secondary"
group, the village as represented concretly by the cOOperative. In inviting
the COOperative members to his wedding, he squarely met the Opposition of his
father, a "rich peasant" who in this instance was exercising his responsibil-
ity to maintain the status honor of the Majumdar lineage and of the reyai in
general. For, as I have suggested earlier, although the individual high
status and/or sardari lineage may contain a number of "middle" and "poor
peasant" families, the relative wealth of the "rich peasant" families and
their actions serve to maintain the status of the lineage as a whole. .Thus,
for old Tafat Ali, the notion that tradition was to be contravened at his

own son's wedding was unthinkable. Behind this particular issue lay the two
decades of deteriorating relations between the three sardari lineages in Haji-
pur, whose background I have briefly summarized. To allow cooperative members
to attend the wedding not only would have, in his view, broken sharply with
custom, but also would have put him in a position of having to invite to a
major ceremony members of lineages with which, over a large part of his life,
he had been in constant rivalry. For this reason, it is probable that he had
little difficulty in getting the actual sardar, his cousin Kala Mia, who was,

for the reasons related in the case more hesitant about Opposing the wedding

162

plans of Ershak, to consult the sardars in the samaj as‘a whole regarding
the propriety of the invitations. In so doing, the conflict issue was
briefly "escalated" to include a grouping much larger than the village it-
self, in which manner Tafat Ali was able to Obtain primordial sorts of sup-
port for his position. For once the sardars had made the decision to deny
the wishes of Ershak it would be all the more difficult for Kala Mia to go
against the general feelings of the sardars, his own peers. In this case,
then, the principle of reyai-invitation to weddings, was invoked to maintain
the prestige and status of older men in the Majumdar lineage and bring into
focus the structural fact of Hajipur's vertical segmentation, along reyai
lines, as opposed to village solidarity, which tended otherwise to center
around the rival Mahisan lineage, more dominant by all indices of power and

influence than the Majumdars in general.

Conflict in Tinpara

I have earlier suggested that conflict in Tinpara was, at the time of
my research, structured horizaontally, in that it revolved around land dis-
putes between the relatively wealthy and dominant sardar, Pradhan Ali, and
the several "middle peasant" families in the village. I had occasion to
witness two conflict situations in Tinpara, one between Pradhan Ali and his
kinsmen and another between him and a "middle peasant" imam, Azizuddin
Khondakar.

At the time of my arrival in Tinpara, relations between all the contes-
tants in the disputes I am about to relate seemed on the surface to be ami-
cable. All were members of the village cooperative society which had been
formed in Tinpara in 1965, and had built up a membership of around 35 by

mid-1967. Its membership consisted largely of members of Tinpara as a

163

village, nicely overlapping this grouping as a "natural unit." Its Manager
was a young man from a well-respected family who himself was affable and

on generally good terms with all the villagers so far as I knew. But his
leadership in the cooperative society was largely passive, especially when
compared with that of Abdul Ali in Hajipur. Far more important in week-to?
week cooperative activities were Pradhan Ali, who had taken the position of
the "Model Farmer," and Azizuddin Khondakar, who had been elected Chairman.
Both of these men took active roles as spokesmen at meetings. Because the
cooperative so largely overlapped the village with respect to its member-
ship, events within it both affected and were affected by those within the
village as a whole.

Relations between Azizuddin and Pradhan Ali had been marked by tension
over land disputes, as I have noted, although they seemed amicable enough
at the time of my arrival. With his kinsmen, however, Pradhan Ali's rela-
tions were at best somewhat cool. Pradhan Ali's homestead consisted Of two
bhadra divisions (see above, Chapter 6, for description of this intra-home-
stead division). In one of these Pradhan Ali lived with his wife and widowed
sister; he had no sons and his daughters were all married out. In the other
bhadra were two chulas housing his cousins, MOhan Mia and Letu Gazi. These
men, however, were not agnates of Pradhan Ali, in that they were the children
of his father's sister who had returned to her natal homestead after being
widowed, bringing her two young sons. As is commonly the case, Pradhan
Ali's aunt had foregone her right to inherit land and so, when she returned
to her homestead after the death of her husband, she was received with good
grace, but her sons were in no position to inherit land from her agnatic
kinsmen. Her brother, however, Pradhan Ali's father, was kind enough, in

return for a stipulated period of voluntary labor, to grant both houseplot

164

and cultivation land to his nethews, Mohan Mia and Letu Gazi, when they
reached maturity. This is how they came to live in the same homestead as
Pradhan Ali, albeit in a separate bhadra. There arose, however, during my
stay in Tinpara, a dispute between Pradhan Ali and his cousins over the
disposition of houseplot land, the actual boundaries of the bhadra division
being unclear. Despite his background of bad relations with Pradhan Ali,
Azizuddin Khondakar attempted to mediate the dispute, using the offices

of the cooperative society of which he was Chairman, which attempt embroiled
him in the resurfacing of Old conflicts with the latter. The long term re-
sult was a series of ultimately unresolved confrontations, an analysis of
which yields useful conclusions about the play of organizational forces in

Tinpara and its neighboring villages.

Case 3, Part A

In June of 1967, an amin (licensed surveyor) arrived at the homestead
of Pradhan Ali in Tinpara. He had come to measure the plot on which
the bhadna of MOhan Mia and Letu Gazi was located. These brothers
had broken up into separate chulas some years earlier but had gotten
into a dispute regarding division of the property between them and had
resolved to have a measurement of its total size. They had been given
the plot, its size being .24 acres, each with his own separate docu-
ments, by their uncle, Amad Ali. Letu Gazi had kept his, but Mohan Mia
_had returned the documents to his uncle, perhaps out of a sense of ob-
ligation to his uncle and not willing to require the latter to forma-
lize the donation of the land.‘

Accurate measurement of the land, however, proved that the size of the
plot was.only .21 acres. Letu Gazi had documents proving his title

to .12 acres of it, whereas his brother Mohan Mia did not. Nonethe-
less, the latter did not want to be deprived of what he believed to be
his rightful half, the other .12 acres of the plot.

With the new measurements, giving a full share of .12 acres to each
brother would require a shifting of ownership rights within the home-
stead as a whole, since the total plot the brothers claimed would
encroach on the houseplot land Of their cousin, Pradhan Ali. Pradhan
Ali, however, refused to countenance the idea; the boundary between
his and his cousins' plot had never been surveyed and with the new
measurements it was found that for them to have what they felt to be
rightfully theirs, Pradhan Ali would have to give up several valuable

165

betel nut tress which would fall into their houseplot. He proposed
that the brothers, equally divide the prOperty as indicated by the
new measurements, and remain content with that. Letu Gazi strongly
objected. "I worked without pay (begar kam kheteci) for my uncle
for 11 years, as we had no land and I had no choice. Later when he
offerred to leave me 4 kanis (1.60 acre) of land, I refused, taking
only 16 gandas (.32 acre). Having worked freely and without com-
plaint, having foregone what I could have had, I will not now give
up what is due me."

Pradhan Ali, MOhan Mia and Letu Gazi were all members of Tinpara's
cooperative society. The Chairman of the society, Azizuddin Khonda-
kar, had earlier introduced a resolution in the cooperative, which
was agreed upon by all members, to the effect that all personal dis-
putes among members would be resolved amicably using the good Offices
of the society. Arguing that this dispute between kinsmen and mem-
bers could adversely affect the cooperative, Azizuddin began to urge
them to settle it within the COOperative fold, pleading further that
the society must retain its unity. Pradhan Ali refused systematical-
ly to be party to any attempt at resolution of the conflict by the
wociety. Mohan Mia and Letu Gazi, however, agreed to allow the coop-
erative to mediate. Thus encouraged, Azizuddin set a date for a hear-
ing and announced that the case would receive judgement by coopera-
tive members. Also to be invited to the hearing would be the locally
respected Manager of the cooperative in Amirnagar, a member also of
the large and dominant Amirnagar Mahisan lineage (whose members had
figured importantly in the old sardari succession dispute described
in Case 1). Officials of the Central COOperative Association would
be invited as well.

On a Friday in the middle of June, the hearing and judgement was
called and the invited parties came, along with the members of the
cooperative society. The Amirnagar Manager came as did an Inspec-
tor Of the Central COOperative Association. But while Letu Gazi
and MOhan Mia were present Pradhan Ali did not come. His wife and
sister reported that he had gone into Comilla town on business that
morning, stayed for the jumma prayer at a mosque in the town and
had still not come back. The assembled members of the hearing re-
mained for a few hours, in which Mohan Mia and Letu Gazi aired
their side of the case. No one present seemed willing to speak

for Pradhan Ali. He himself did not show up at the meeting and
those who had gathered in his kaohari ghar for the judgement final-
ly left.

This conflict was not resolved by the time I left the area nor was there
another attempt to resolve it by group pressures of the sort that Azizuddin
had tried to bring to bear on the disputants, particularly Pradhan Ali. It
was clear that no solution could be had without his compliance and that he

would not recognize the authority of his fellow villagers, regardless Of the

166

external support Azizuddin had tried to bring about in pressuring him. In
his attempt to play the role of peace-maker, Azizuddin had failed.

From that point on, his overtly cordial relations with his old enemy,
Pradhan Ali, rapidly deteriorated. I was present several evenings in the
latter's homestead when Azizuddin presented himself and insisted on raising
the issue. On these occasions loud and vociferous quarrelling ensued between
Pradhan Ali and Azizuddin, with Pradhan Ali's wife emerging from behind her
purdah screen to plead with Azizuddin to leave the matter alone and prevent
old wounds from re—opening.

Throughout the summer tension-ridden inter-personal relations smoldered
in the monsoon heat. Old conflicts between Pradhan Ali and Azizuddin sur-
faced again. Finally in late September, Azizuddin made a point of taking
me aside and informing me, with what I perceived to be a glint of triumph in
his eyes, that I would have the occasion to see a true bichar ("judgement")

and that "that guy will see" (5i beta dekhbe).

Case 3, Part B .

Azizuddin had arranged a meeting of the samaj in which an Old land dis-
pute between him and Pradhan Ali would be finally resolved. Some five
years previously, Azizuddin had taken a loan Of Rs. 100. from Gada
Mistri, of the Tinpara Woodworker homestead. As security for the loan,
he put up a plot of his wife's land without her knowing it (he had mar-
ried a parallel cousin who had inherited her father's land which he sub-
sequently engaged in leasing out as a means of supplementing his liveli-
hood as an imam). His wife later discovered Gada Mistri working on her
land and thus Azizuddin had to tell her what he had done. Now it hap-
pened that Pradhan Ali had wanted that land but had not succeeded in
getting Gada Mistri to release it to him. Not long after the transac-
tion between Azizuddin and Gada Mistri, the latter died. Pradhan Ali
seized this Opportunity to pay Gada Mistri's widow the Rs. 100 which
her husband had originally lent to Azizuddin in exchange for the plot of
land. Azizuddin, however, behaved as though the land were still in his
wife's possession. Gada Mistri had conveniently died and who was left,
then, to make him pay the original debt? Surely not a mere widow whose
two sons were impoverished tenants and wood-workers! Azizuddin then
proceeded to mortgage the land to another man living in.a village some
miles distant, Daiara. Pradhan Ali, however, complained; had he not,

167

after all, paid the original debt of Azizuddin? Did that not mean that
the land was his?

The dispute over this plot of land remained unresolved for the following
five years, during which time the cooperative society had been formed
and the hostilities between Pradhan Ali and his kinsmen had taken place.
The latter troubles had served to bring to a head the bad relations be-
tween Azizuddin and Pradhan Ali which stemmed from this, and other, ol-
der, conflicts. Thwarted in his attempt to "resolve" the dispute be-
tween Pradhan Ali and his kinsmen - in a manner which would have caused
loss to Pradhan Ali - Azizuddin now resolved to bring the former matter
to a head.

In September of 1967 the bichar of the Pradhan Ali-Azizuddin Khondakar
dispute was held, in front of Pradhan Ali's own kaohari ghar, from which
the benches and a table had been removed to accomodate the guests. As
the relevant sardars and others involved arrived, Pradhan Ali, showing
both hospitality and respect, produced a water pipe (hookah), betel nut
and pan leaves for his "guests." His demeanor among his peers was far
more deferrent than the usual self-assertive manner with which I had
seen him behave when dealing with Tinpara villagers, over whom he held
unequalled sway.

Of the 14 sardars in the samaj, only 6 were present besides Pradhan Ali
himself and I recognized these as the very men who had been aligned with
Pradhan Ali in the samaj faction which had taken place over the Zindapur
divorce incident (see above).

The salish began with a statement of claims by Azizuddin first and then
Pradhan Ali. Witnesses to the whole affair were then questioned by

the sardars sitting in judgement. The sons of Gada Mistri spoke, large-
ly in support of Pradhan Ali who had paid back the loan of Rs. 100. and
who had supported them in their own disputes with other villagers in
Tinpara. The Daiara man to whom the land had been subsequently mort-
gaged by Azizuddin said that he had taken the land in mortgage in good
faith and was thus concerned about the money he had lent in exchange

for it. Other Tinpara villagers spoke, in favor of one or the other
disputant.

After two hours of heated discussion the sardars were of two minds.
Clearly, the land belonged to Azizuddin's wife and there could be no
disputing that, even though Azizuddin had acted in bad faith first by
not repaying the loan before repossessing the land he had mortgaged
for it and then secondly by mortgaging it out again when its ownership
was in dispute. On the other hand, Pradhan Ali, their peer, had acted
precipitously in repaying the loan in his attempt to get Azizuddin's
land. This action could not be justified. Finally, alas, there were
no documents to attest to any of the reported transactions.

It is the ideal of all such salish in which complicated relations and
events are invariably involved to attempt to reach a compromise (mel).
The sardars chose the latter course. It was agreed that Pradhan Ali

would receive from Azizuddin Rs. 80 (out of the total Rs. 100) he had

168

paid in repaying the latter's loan. Because of his hasty action in re-

paying the loan, he would lose the remaining Rs. 20. The land would

be returned to its title holder, Azizuddin's wife, but not before

Azizuddin himself had payed a "fine" of Rs. 35. in compensation for the

trouble he had caused the widow and sons of Gada Mistri. Finally, the

land would remain mortgaged to the Daiara man.

The incidents reported in Case 3 afford the Opportunity of analy-
zing group processes at both the reyai/village and the samaj levels of organ-
ization. 0n the one hand, the way in which a single lineage - or in this
case a sole individual - may dominate within the smaller unit - the reyai/
village - is demonstrated. On the other hand, it may also be seen how and why
an intra-reyai/village conflict can be "escalated" to the samaj level of or-
ganization, with differing consequences for the actions of those involved.

In his dealings with his land-poor matrilateral kinsmen, Pradhan Ali
was scathingly contemptuous. Moreover, attempts to mediate the conflict be-
tween Pradhan Ali and his kinsmen by other members of the same reyai/village
— through the medium of the cooperative society - may be seen to have failed
simply becuase, at least at the time of my presence in Tinpara, Pradhan Ali
refused, and could not be compelled, to cooperate with those efforts. It
is possible to suspect that he saw in these attempts a challenge to his long-
accustomed de facto role as "leader" in Tinpara village affairs. Moreover,
given the long-standing tension between him and Azizuddin, he saw the latter's
role in attempting to "mediate the conflict" as in reality an effort publical-
ly to embarrass him. There is good evidence that such a suspicion was justi-
fied. During the first several months of my stay in Tinpara, Pradhan Ali was
my host. After I had been in his home as guest for 2 months, Pradhan Ali ap-
proached me a bit embarrassedly and requested that I prepare to seek lodging

elsewhere. There were, he said, elements in the village who were back—biting

him (and, it turned out, me as well), saying that by housing a non-Muslim

169

foreigner, a partaker of the forbidden flesh of the pig and drink of the vine,
he, Pradhan Ali was acting in a most "un—Islamic" manner! His prestige, he
said sadly, was being called into question. Shortly thereafter, I moved to
other quarters in the area. The "elements" who had been so maligning Pradhan
Ali proved to be only 1 in number: none other than Azizuddin who in his capa-
city as imam could be said to have a certain authroity, in the eyes of other
villagers, in judging the Islamic purity of this or that act.

It is further to be noted that, if indeed the whole attempt at "mediation
of the conflict" can be seen as Azizuddin's effort to embarrass Pradhan Ali,
he was, at that point, playing by the rules with the effect that in his oppo-
sition to Pradhan Ali he was using rules as resources in political conflict
(see Swartz 1968: 26-30 and Nicholas 1968b). Had there not been, after all, a
resolution by the Tinpara COOperative Society to the effect that all conflicts
between members should be mediated by the group? And, in his capacity as the
society's Chairman, was not he, Azizuddin, merely acting in a desired and ap-
propriate capacity? Finally, by refusing to acquiesce in such a mediation
procedure, was not Pradhan Ali "breaking the rules" and exposing himself to
criticism thereby?

All that may be true, but as the events show, Pradhan Ali seemed not to
be concerned with the possibility of any such criticism. His ability thus to
flaunt attempts to mediate what for him was a personal matter demonstrates
the manner in which one man or lineage can dominate a small reyai or village
grouping, unless Opposed by nearly equally powerful individuals or lineages
in that same grouping. The conflict situations in Hajipur and Tinpara provide
useful contrasts on this point.

I have earlier argued that the formation of small localized groupings

such as the reyai or multi-reyai village depdnds on the coalescence of power

170

and influence around one dominant lineage. Where, however, as in the case

of Hajipur the most powerful lineage can from time to time be successfully
Opposed by others of some economic and political substance in the grouping,
that dominance can only be maintained by the more complex political process
of gaining support and building a successful clique or faction which is

more inclusive than a group of kinsmen can be. The events I have reported

in the building of the Hajipur COOperative Society, under the leadership of
the Mahisans, are submitted as evidence for this generalization. Where, by
contrast, only one lineage or individual dominates in a reyai/village group-
ing, the political process is simpler in the sense that that lineage or indi-
vidual can behave more arbitrarily in most instances and retain sufficient
power to stave off all combinations and coalitions which attempt to contain
him or it. The ability of Pradhan Ali to resist what amounted to a politi-
cal attack on him by Azizuddin in this respect, over and above the latter's
attempt to gain support for this by bringing a certain incident to the atten-
tion of the village as a whole, can be taken as evidence for the second gen-
eral statement.

As I have related, with the failure of Azizuddin's mediation attempt,
personal relations between him and Pradhan Ali deteriorated rapidly into Open
conflict, taking their expression in the form of animosities regarding an
old and unresolved dispute. As the events of Case 3 suggest, Azizuddin,
seeing it impossible to best his rival in the political field represented by
the reyai/village level of organization, moved to "escalate" the conflict by
widening its field to include elements of the samaj level of organization.
This move demonstrates the process of political escalation to include in-
creasingly wider social groupings, the extension of the reyai to the samaj

levels of organization. It suggests that when a man cannot gain political

171

ends at the interpersonal, reyai or village levels of interaction, he has an
option to escalate the conflict by bringing in actors to whom he has access
'who have the requisite "countervailing power" to those forces which oppose
him in various ways in a previously less complex and/or numerically smaller
(in terms of number of actors) field.

In part the ability to do this depends on the individual involved. While
I did not have occasion to witness many examples of the samaj operating in a
salish Of the sort described in Case 3, I suspect that a poor man from a low
status lineage might have less easy recourse to the conflict resolution func-
tions of the samaj, particularly if he is involved in a dispute with a sardar
(e.g., Pradhan Ali). But, although he was only of "middle peasant" economic
status, Azizuddin could nonetheless be seen as a man of some substance in Tin-
para and its neighboring area. As_a Khondakar, he was a member Of a tradition-
ally high status priestly lineage and one of previously noteworthy local sta-
tus and power as well, in that prior to Independence and Partition the Tin-
para Khondakars had enjoyed the favor of the Maharajas of Tripura. As had
been his ancestors, Azizuddin was, along with one of his brothers, an imam,
which status, irrespective of the personal regard in which he might be pri-
vately held, perforce assured him in a predominantly Muslim community of pub-
lic respect. An intelligent and obviously self-assertive man, he performed
the role of imam vigorously and with pride, leading congregational prayer in
one mosque and teaching in.a madrassa in another village. In the latter con-
nection, he was in contact with Officials of the Pakistan Academy for Rural
Development as a participating member of the "Feeder School" program, in
which role of imam teachers is to be expanded to include teaching non-tradi‘
tional subjects such as the Bengali language (in addition to Arabic) and some

simple arithmetic. From this role as a "leader in rural modernization" he

172

seemed to derive not a little personal satisfaction and, at least in hiw own
eyes, additional prestige. He was, in my judgement, the possessor of a re-
‘markably wide fund of knowledge when compared to other villagers of my acquain-
tance and his eagerness to display this in conversation with his fellows in
Tinpara invariably made him, in my observation, one of the centers of atten-
tion in any such casual bantering. (I once, for example, heard him cogently
and accurately address a group of relaxing conversationalists on the subject
of the origins of World war 11, an event which I suspect for most of the chit-
chatting participants only brought to mind what they might recall of troops
and planes stationed in Comilla in the early 1940's for bombing missions in
Southeast Asia.)

Such a man, then, though not outstanding in wealth, can nonetheless
have access to powerful allies in a political conflict, and if an Azizuddin
Khondakar called upon the sardars to adjudicate a conflict involving himself
and one of their peers, it was to the call of a man of no mean personal and
social standing that they were being asked to respond. Not all of the
sardars came to the salish, however, as I have reported, and all of those
who did were identifiable as men who at one point or another had sided with
Pradhan Ali in the various disputes by which the samaj had been racked for
two decades. His former allies though they were, however, Pradhan Ali's
demeanor toward them stood in marked contrast to that he had displayed when
earlier called to appear for the settlement of the dispute with his kinsmen.
In the former situation, Pradhan Ali was acting in his own bailiwick, where
he had long held sway without peer and if his actions there seem to have
been cavalier and arbitrary they clearly should not be as surprising. How-
ever, confronted with a call to judgement by his peers in the samaj, he could

hardly dismiss the salish to which he was summoned with the same contempt

173

‘without undergoing the risk of considerably negative social costs. Thus, in
escalating the personal dispute to the samaj level of organization, Azizuddin,
having been thwarted in his earlier attempt, was assured of success in forcing
Pradhan Ali to a public confrontation.

It is more difficult to analyze the outcome of the salish itself, al-
though it is not crucial to my purpose in relating these events to do so.
.After it was over, I found most participants other than Azizuddin (who consi-
dered it his victory) reticent in discussing it and individual motivations are
thus difficult to fathom. I have noted that the ideal norm in such a media-
tion is compromise and, for whatever it might have ultimately been worth,
this is clearly what the sardars were trying to do. Though all the sardars
present were, so far as I could tell, amicably disposed toward Pradhan Ali,
it was clear that they regarded his role in the affair as improper. At the
same time, Azizuddin's delay in repaying the loan and subsequent irresponsible
action in utilizing and re-mortgaging the collateral land could hardly be
taken as evidence of great uprightness either. The compromise worked out
has all the earmarks of attempted fairness in the judgement of two men caught
in qually subtle acts of thievery. It did not, I might add, result in the
immediate smoothing over of relations between the two, at least insofar as I
was able to observe them during the subsequent few months of my stay in Tin-
para. Perhaps the great gainers were the widow and sons of Gada Mistri, who
in the end were accorded Rs. 35 more than the original amount of the loan for
their sufferings. The incident serves to underline, among other things,
the practical difficulty of actually collecting on loans in Tinpara and Haji-
pur. For much of the incessant money lending goes on without benefit of docu-
ment and even if legal evidence of transactions were consistently kept the

problems involved in the enforcement of rights of contract in rural Bengali

174

society are great. Perhaps for this, if no other, reason the sardars, most
of whom are "rich" peasants themselves with much at stake in creditor trans-
actions, have a particular interest in attempting to enforce the norms of
honesty and fairness in those situations where they are called publically to

exercise judgement.

Summary

I have attempted in this chapter to show by means of the analysis of
cases something of the actual dynamics of social organization in Hajipur and
Tinpara. I have discussed the way in which some semblance of village unity
is developed in the face of inter-lineage rivalry expressed at the reyai
level of organization in a multi-reyai community. By contrast, I have tried
to show the politics of dominance in a village where there is only one cen-
ter of preponderant power and influence. Finally, I have wanted to show
what I consider to be the most significant feature of social organization in
this part of East Bengal, the symbiotic relationship between small, intensive
and immediately exclusive groupings and larger, extensive and more generally
inclusive ones.

It should also be evident that the formal characteristics of conflict
in these villages are more complex than a brittle application of "class ana-
lysis" would reveal. I have noted the omnipresence of "atomistic" conflict,
which occurs within and between the lines of economic class and social sta-
tus, however these may be drawn. Factional conflict does, however, inevi-
tably involve the more wealthy and powerful of peasant proprietors who, as
the cases I have reported suggest, fight among themselves with such regularity
as to render simplistic any attempt to characterize them as a solidary rural
"ruling class." Thus, in the analysis of mundane, everyday conflict situations,

Observation of the lines of cleavage in the given instance is important. As

175

the case of Hajipur shows, where there is a rough balance of economic power
between two or three dominant lineages, the competition between them will
tend to produce vertical cleavages in the "universe" of the conflict group
involved. Where a group is dominated by one lineage, as is the case in
Tinpara, the line of cleavage will be horizontal, as members of non-dominant
lineages come into dispute with the most powerful individual or lineage in
the group. It is in such situations, I tentatively conclude, that the ex-
ternal linkages to larger groupings - such as that between the reyai or vil-
lage and the samaj - will be brought into play, and the arena of conflict be
thus escalated, as the weaker disputants attempt to gain support from more
powerful allies. In this sense, the lines of economic class and political
power I have sought to demarcate become meaningful. For to the extent that
the samaj serves to regulate political relations among the most powerful
‘men in each localized sub-grouping, calling it into play allows the less

"system," to gain assistance against

powerful, utilizing the norms of the
their stronger adversaries. This political process in turn gives the so-
cial organization of Comilla thana communities their territorially extensive

and "multi-tiered" character.

CHAPTER IX

CONCLUSION

This thesis has emphasized the structurally ambivalent character of the
villages in Comilla thana in relationship to the larger organizational en-
semble to which they contribute and in which they are embedded. They are
not, as I have suggested, residential social systems in a holistic sense, in.
that as social groupings they do not encompass the whole of rural people's.
activities. While this study has been concerned with Comilla thana villages,
I think that they are somewhat representative of social organization in
other parts of East Pakistan. My brief and impressionistic visits to some
of the other most pOpulous districts of the province lead me tO suspect fun—
damental structural similarities elsewhere with regard to rural social organ-
ization. I gained this impression in the watery terrain of Barisal, for
example, and the street-crossed plain of Mymensingh, where in both districts
the "village" also seems to be an ephemeral entity. 'Glasse (1967: 205),
while mindful as I have been of these activities which lend unity and sub-
stance to village organization in his research area, nonetheless writes of
‘Matlab thana in northern Comilla District:

"Seen from the_air, it is difficult to distinguish where one vil-

lage begins and the other ends, so dense is the population; so un-

patterned the agglomerations of dwellings. This difficulty does

not exist, to be sure, in peOple's minds and everyone knows to which

gram he belongs and the geographical boundaries Of the gram are fa-

miliar to most. But one may be skeptical of the social unity of

the gram. It has no collective activities, no communal property, nor

has it any headman or administrative structure; there is no meeting

place nor village square." (my translation).

Yet to readers familiar with the patterns of residence which obtain in

many parts of northern and central India, the patterns of social organization

176

177

I have described will not seem totally unique. Indeed, it is probably not
far-fetched to see the villages of both East and west Bengal as part of a
North Indian continuum, with general similarities in residential lay-out
modified by regional variations in population density, environment and the
resultant settlement patterns. The Bengali para or ward builds into vil—
lages in much the same way as do the wards and other sub-divisions of vil—
1ages in the Punjab (Smith 1955: 148), Delhi (Lewis 1965: 22-26), Uttar
Pradesh (Cohn 1955: 56-58) and parts of Central India (Mayer 1960: 132-139).
But the non-nucleated character of deltaic Bengali villages greatly miti-
gates the spartial, and thus in part the social, solidarity which is found
in the "hamleted villages" of these other regions. Similarly, because the
reyai and samaj serve in fact to negate the solidarity of the village as a
grouping, community organization reflects at best an extreme on any hypotheti-
cal continuum of social structural forms one might postulate for northern South
Asia. This is one reason for my suggesting that in Comilla the market area be
taken as focal to rural social organization; the market area is, in effect, "the
village," if one is in fact seeking whole residential social systems to analyze.
But if the organization of Comilla's rural communities is seen as broadly

analoguous to that of their North and Central Indian counterparts, an attempt
at processual, as well as structural, analysis of their workings may hope-
fully contribute insight into general structures and processes in rural South
Asia. In the end, this thesis hopes so to contribute.

I have tried to show how economic class, social status and political power
relationships in these East Bengal communities bring the forma% and infor-
mal groupings which comprise them into being. As the description and analy-
sis of Chapter 8 attempts to demonstrate, the social reality of the reyai

and samaj as groups is seen most clearly in essentially political

178-

processes. That is, their reality as social groupings“is"nitimately and
fully emergent, "called into being," as it were, by activities which are
either overtly political or symbolically reflective of political relations.
Furthermore, the importance of the reyai, the gram or the samaj as groups
which organize rural peOple's activities - and the manner in which this
organization of activities occurs - is situationallyrdependent'on'the par-
ticular expression of underlying social structural factors — those of

class, status and power — at any given point in time.“ Close examination,
‘with this kind of focus, of communities elsewhere on the'Subécontinent might
yield fruitful contributions to our overall understanding of them.

I might add in further conclusion that the principles of rural social
organization in Comilla thana - involving "compounds" of "social structures"
as Geertz, quoted earlier, suggests - seem operative in peasant societies
elsewhere in the world which are characterized by similar population densi-
ties and similar histories. Thus, for example, Geertz (1968: 83-103) des-
cribes the history of the Javanese village over 150 years of colonial domina-
tion and alternating intervention and noneintervention in the rural economy

' I have

of Java by colonial authorities as an "advance toward vagueness.‘
argued that the social structure and institutions of Hajipur and Tinpara
reflect in part ecOlogical adaptions under conditions of historical neglect
by the‘colonial power and its minions. East Bengal has in common with Java

a similar ecology and partially similar history of colonial neglect, and its
villages seem to exhibit at first glance the kind of "flaccid indeterminate-
ness" which Geertz attributes~to the Javanese village, although the proces-
ses to which their.eocial forms are adaptive are not exactly parallel. Other

cases in which there has been historically an absence of effective external

control of rural areas may provide comparatively useful insight.

179

Hobsbawn (1965: 30-56) traces the origins of the Sicilian Mafia to
circumstances not unlike those of Bengal under first Hindu, then Muslim,
and finally British, rule. Under the Bourbons and later the Piedmontese
rural Sicily was in effect controlled by a "shapeless" and "decentralized"
"parallel system" of government which gave rise to the Mafia. It emerged
in the 19th Century as a patronage-linked complex of organizational ties
‘which centered around a local "boss" whose influence was channeled through
his informal linkages with his dependents. Such a constellation of patron—
client relationships - known in Sicily as a cosca - was relatively inde—
pendent as a power base for local leaders, but informal kinds of under-
standings created the potential for occasional combination with like enti-
ties, thus-allowing the development of a kind of "invisible government" in
the hold of which estern Sicily is gripped even today. "In lawless communi-
ties," Hobsbawn tells us, "power is rarely scattered among an anarchy of

' and is exercised

competing units, but clusters around local strong points,‘
by reciprocal patronage understandings of local leaders. "What character-
ized Sicily was the universal prevalence of such patronage and the virtual
absence of any other form of constant power" (Hobsbawn 1965: 32—33). Over-
generalization in comparison is not meant here, but it is clear that rural
Bengal in the 19th and early 20th Centuries was in fact relatively lawless,

if by that adjective one means the general lack of constant externally en-
forced administrative and social control. In this sense, in a manner appro-
priate to their own ecological setting and responsive to the internal pres-
sures of pOpulation growth with its attendant economic deterioration, Bengali
Muslim.peasants allowed political power to coalesce under the aegis of locally

dominant families - a "clustering around local strong points" seems clearly

to have taken place. Thus, the background for the development of the ensemble

180

of institutions and social forms I have described is one of historical condi-
tions which permitted largely autonomous growth.

My attempts at historical cross-cultural comparison here are meant only
to be suggestive. For any such effort to claim even near definitiveness we
must await a much more comprehensive social history of Bengal which will
elucidate the ways in which local peasant communities were established and
integrated into historically changing types of state systems - Hindu, Mughal
and British. Indeed, we have no such study for any region of the South
Asian Sub-continent and perhaps the time is ripe in Indian studies for a
‘major work of "social anthrOpological history" akin to the admirable efforts
of Geertz (1965) and Wolf (1959).

Meanwhile, it is hoped that the present study, in addition to providing
socio-cultural information onra heretofore badly neglected region of the
Sub-continent, will furnish interested scholars with some modicum of insight
into the ways in which dense populations living in scattered rural settlement
patterns are integrated into increasingly complex social structures. Laurie-
ton Sharp (1958) once wrote a stimulating article in which he tried to show
that the Yir Yoront of northern Australia were a "people without politics."
Later critics of the piece have argued ironically that in fact Sharp was des-
cribing a political system while trying to deny its reality. I might well
place myself in an analoguous position if I were to argue too strenuously that
rural East Bengalis are "peasants without villages." Yet the basic finding of
this research has been that the "villages" of Comilla thana are at best "some—
time things" and that their inhabitants are directly enmeshed in simultaneously
operative levels of social organization which both structurally and territorially
engulf their "villages" to the point of irrelevance in many social and politi-

cal situations. Bengali peasants themselves, however, do identify cognitively

181

with social groupings known as “Villages." Moreover, in using throughout
the term "village" I too show myself to be mentally bound by the vocabulary
of an older ethnographic tradition which assumed that a local community
could be perceived as a territorially bounded social system for purposes

of holistic analysis. Nonetheless, I am driven close to suggesting that the
rice farmers of southeastern Bengal can be - indeed, must be - viewed as
"peasants without villages" if some coherent description of their society is
to be made. Finally, although I am curiously enamored of the monsoon-boiled
delta of Eastern Bengal and its irascibly sociable inhabitants, I would in

"special uniqueness" as regards

no way claim for its society and culture a
basic processes, as my brief foray into cross-cultural historical comparison
above indicates. But meaningful comparisons of this sort must await a larger

synthesis which I would be presumptuous, to say the least, to attempt here.

FOOTNOTES

1A book-length village study by Hafeez Zaidi is in press (East-West Center),
but as of this writing it has not appeared. 0f the published field reports

I have reviewed, I judge those of Qadir (1960) and Glasse (1967) to be the
most useful. Also of some ethnographic and sociological utility are articles
by Fazlur Rashid Khan (1962) and Nizam Uddin Ahmed (1962). Some culturally
descriptive material can be gleaned from certain development-oriented, pri-
marily social psychological, studies, most notably that of Rahim (1965).
Economic, sociological, and some ethnographic data can be extracted from a
careful review of the reports of the Pakistan Academy for Rural DevelOpment

at Comilla, as well as its (now defunct) Journal (of the East Pakistan Academy
for Rural DevelOpment). I am persuaded on re—reading an attempt by myself

and two co-authors to utilize these and other secondary sources, however, that
at best only a very general overview of East Bengali village culture can be
attained, one which is greatly lacking in crucial detail (see Beech, Bertocci
and Corwin 1966). These materials, plus a judicious use of agricultural sta-
tistics and census data, can render a good second-hand description of the
political economy of the East Pakistani rural scene, as the first chapter of

a recent work by Rehman Sobhan (1968) admirably suggests. Finally, there is
an older body of work on Easthengali Muslim society, that of British adminis-
trators, often scholarly students of Indian society, some of whose studies I
have found helpful both for sociological and historical purposes. The biblio-
graphy provided by Nazmul Karim (1956) includes many such references.

2I am departing from scholarly custom in including Indic words in the text
without transliterating them with each appearance. I do so frankly because
the practice appears to be tedious for both typist and non-specialist reader.
Thus, Indic words, regardless of origin, will appear in the text spelled either
according to their most common English rendering or in a form deemed most
amenable to accurate pronunciation by readers of English. Recognizing both
the proclivities and the needs of the specialist, however, I provide a glos-
sary in Appendix I in which most Indic words appearing in the text are trans-
literated as spelled in Bengali and explained. This procedure will be fol-
lowed except where whole sequences of Bengali dialogue are quoted in the ori—
ginal in the text. In these few instances, the words will be transliterated
and translated. Where possible, the Bengali spelling followed will be that
found in Dev (1963). For many words, however, I can find no readily available
dictionary reference and their spelling will be my own rendering. In the

case of all transliteration, I use the system proposed by Inden and Dimock
(1970).

3The thana is a unit of political administration which corresponds roughly in
function to the American county. It is in turn composed of units known as
Unions, themselves agglomerations of villages and mauzas which together com-
prise a residential population of about 1,200. Thanas are in turn grouped in-
to Subdivisions, the latter into Districts and finally Divisions. The term
Kbtwali refers to that thana in which a given District's headquarters are lo-
cated.

182

183

4Mauzas are administratively defined revenue and census units. More about
them in relation to the problem of village definition will be explained in
Chapter 2.

51 am grateful to Mr. Boujra of the Department of Anthropology of the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, for having suggested
to me the possible derivation of the Bengal term reyai from the Arabic
ra'iyyah, meaning follower or citizen. I have found in Mitre (1923) the fol-
lowing similar words in Bengali, cited here as further evidence for my in-
terpretation of the word: reyét: remission, indulgence, favor, pardon;
reyati: favorite, protege. Given the character of the reyai as a social
grouping, this etymological interpretation seems most nearly accurate.

6POpulation density figures are taken from Haroun Er Rashid (1965: 356),
p. 356. The data on size of farms are calculated from the Pakistan Census of
Agriculture (East Pakistan I: 46—85), tables 5-9.

7The term "conruration" is that coined by Robert Glasse, to whom I am in-
debted on several counts in addition to this most apt description of the rural
East Pakistani countryside. A draft copy of his now published paper (Glasse
1967) was the first piece of useful ethnographic description of Bengali Mus-
lim peasantry I had seen prior to going to the field and it served as a use-
ful guide to the beginnings of my own study. I am also grateful for his com-
‘ments on a paper I have earlier prepared for the Fourth Annual Conference on
Bengal.

8Along the western border of Comilla District where the flooding of the

‘Meghna River has necessitated the raising of banks (kandi) along which while
villages have come to be settled, such names as Daudkandi (daud kandi),

"David's Bank," Korikandi (kari Randi), "bank of shells," and Kawlakandi

(kala kandi), "banana tree bank," seem common. By contrast, where villages
have been established in the Lalmai Hills, a low range of foothills in the
western end of Comilla Kotwali Thana, such names as Dhanmura (dhan mura),

"hill of rice paddy," and Vaishnabmura (baignab mura), "hill of the Vishnuites,"
are found. The attachment of such appelations to settled agglomerates reflect
the geographical features which dominate in determining the character of settle-
ment. (I hasten to add, however, that by no means are all place names in
Bengal limited to geographically derived aphorisms.)

9The Jugi (Yogi) Weavers are a good example of the distinctness of "caste sub-
cultures" within the vast Hindu fold. At least one respected scholar (Dasgupta
1962: 368-70) associates them with the Nath cult, from which they apparently
draw their surnames and preferred caste name. Perhaps because of their reli-
gious deviation from more Sanskritized practices in Bengali Hinduism, they
have been traditionally low-ranked. For example, they do not follow the cus-
tom of cremation of the dead, but rather bury their deceased members in flexed
position. Brahmans will not take water from them nor will they consent to ad-
minister ritual to the Jugis. Rather, the Jugis have their own "caste priests,’
variously called Goswami or Mahatma (Webster 1910: 25-29). Webster reported
that in the Census of 1901 the caste priests of the Jugis wanted to be recorded
as "Jugi Brahmanas" and listed as a separate community. The family of Jugi
Brahmans I knew gave a Brahman surname, their male members were the sacred
thread, and they were referred to by other villages as thakur, the locally

184

common referent for brahman. Among the several Jugi Weaver families I knew
of, Vaishnavism seemed common and in several cases individual members of
these families had become "caste Baishnabs" (see Nicholas 1969 for an account
of these).

lolt is a principle of the Comilla cooperative movement, to which I shall
refer importantly in another context, that the cooperative societies be
formed in localized "natural" social groupings; hence the name "village level
cooperative societies" (see Fairchild and Huq 1961: 10-12; 19-21).

11For a discussion of some aspects of the "relocation policy" of the Govern-
ment of East Pakistan, see Sophur (1963). His report deals primarily with

the problem of relocating Chakma tribals from the Rangamati area to make way
for the large lake which the damming of the Karnaphuli River at Kaptai would
produce. Sophur hints at a distinct bias of the Government in favor of set-
tling Muslim Bengali peasants along the hilly India-Pakistan-Burma border areas,
a preference from which villagers in crowded areas like Comilla thana, such as
those described in Example 6, have benefitted. The Chakma tribals, however,
seem to have fared less well as this whole process of settlement and relocation
has unfolded.

12Theodore W. Schultz (1965) has cogently discussed the inadequacies of "tra-
ditional" agriculture in this regard. During the period of my research in
Comilla, the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development and the Government of Pakis-
tan had spear-headed the introduction of the new high-yielding varieties of rice
develOped on Taiwan and at the International Rice Research Institute at Los

Banos in the Philippines, especially IRRI-8, IRRI-9 and Taipei-177. The diffu-
sion of these new varieties, along with the technological and agricultural prac-
tices of an innovative sort which must accompany them, had begun to take hold
among certain groups of cultivators. But the experience at Comilla, as well as
elsewhere, provides a caveat to unduly high hopes for immediately spectacular
results from the "miracle seeds," as they are sometimes called. Among the atten-
dant difficulties associated with their introduction are new problems of disease
(to which lower yielding native varieties are resistant), new needs for fertili-
zer and insecticides, and the need for innovations in behavior required for their
correct use. Moreover, these impending technological changes are fraught with
sociological, economic and resultant political implications. Discussing the
latter with respect to India, for example, Nair (1969: 220-234) raises the pos-
sibility of too "technocratic" a solution to the problem of inducing adoption

of the new varieties, in which the large cultivators are likely first to respond
*with subsequent efforts at throwing smaller and less efficient cultivators off
the land. Wharton (1969) discusses this problem as well, in his general overview
of the difficulties engendered by the "green revolution."

13One maund is equal to approximately 82 pounds (lbs). One rupee (abbreviated
sign: R.; plural Rs.), at currently official rates of exchange, is worth approxi-
mately US$.21.

14In the "Tebhaga Movement" in Bengal between 1945 and 1947, the peasants' demands
seem to.have been exceedingly modest. The slogan of the movement reflected their
'wish that rents be reduced from half (adhar; hence the tenants' appelation
fidhifir) of the crop to merely one third of it (tin bhagor "3 divisions"; hence
Tebhaga). Legislation to this effect was never passed, however, and so the com-
mon "50/50" basis remains "legal." For a political analysis of the Tebhaga

185

Movement, see Sen (1947) and Gankovsky and Gordon-Polonakaya (1964: 42-45).
Hamza Alavi (1965) provides a brief description and sociological analysis.

I have noted that outright tenancy appears to be non-existent and "owner-cum-
tenant" farms relatively few in Comilla District. This seems to be the case
for the most populous districts in the province generally, as contrasted with
those of less pOpulous North Bengal. For example, Dinajpur, Rajshahi and
Bogra Districts all have nearly 50 percent and above of their farms in the
"owner-cum-tenant" category, and outright tenancy varies from between 1 and 8
percent for all three.

15Women participate in production activities by carrying out the tasks of
threshing, winnowing, and husking rice once it is brought in from the fields
(purddh proscriptions prevent their working in the fields, although they may
be seen on specially made platforms near homesteads where these activities
are carried on). Poor widows or the wives of the less wealthy cultivators
earn some income by working in the homesteads of the more prosperous, helping
the latters' wives in their tasks. Payment for these services is usually in
kind. For example, women husking rice are commonly paid at a rate of 1.75
Beers per maund of husked rice; I was informed that a pair of women working
steadily can husk rice at a rate of l maund every 2-3 hours. The work is
exhausting, however, and to work at it more than this amount of time is rare.
(There are 40 sears in a maund; l seer equals approximately 2.1 pounds.)

16The rate of payment for day labor in the fields (muni) varies between Rs. .75
(12 annas) and Rs. 2., depending on whether or not one or more meals are pro-
vided by the employer. Rickshaw pullers rent their vehicles from both town and
country-based mahajans at a common rate of Rs. 3. per day. [l anna is equal to
approximately US$.013; there are 16 annas in a rupee, although this old and time-
honored division of the rupee has been officially changed to a decimal system
(100 naye paise equal Rs. 1.; 4 annas equal Rs. .25).]

17About a half dozen members of the villages under study engage in petty trade,
either as a major or supplemental source of income. Some of them sell in
local rural markets (hat), selling betel nut and pan leaves, or other similar
items. Most often they sell items procured in the central markets of the
town, bringing their wares to the countryside. Others rent stalls or uncov-
ered spots in the Chauk Bazar (the major market of Comilla town) where they
sell goods they have gotten from town warehouse agents at wholesale prices.
Thus they serve as agents for the dispersal of goods manufactured locally or
elsewhere to the general public; it happened that most of those I knew engaged
in this way were sellers of Zungis, the inexpensive and brightly colored ankle
length waist cloth worn nearly universally by Bengali Muslim peasants.

181 have noted the fact that the appelation Sheikh is one of comparatively
recent adoption in Comilla District. It may be that the massive "ashrafaiza-
tion" process took place concommitant with the graduate growth of Muslim com-
munal consciousness in the 19th Century, certain movements associated with
this process explicitly condemning the religious syncretism of rural Bengali
Muslims. The Faraizi Movement (see M.A. Khan 1965) is a good example of an
orthodox Islamic revivalism which had great impact in rural areas, and in pro-
moting a more "correct" awareness of the Islamic great tradition, it may well
have helped to induce rural Muslims to call themsevles by one of the other
Ashraf titles.

186

191n the area around Hajipur and Tinpara, the Hindu serving castes have
ample demand on their special wares. The Tinpara carpenters are reknowned
in the thana for their expertise in making plows and other agricultural
implements and in early spring and summer it is rare to enter their home-
stead compound and not find several Muslim customers patiently waiting

their turn for a plow to be made. The barbers who live just south of Haji-
pur's core are constantly employed in hair-cutting and shaving, both on the
basis of a payment in kind with villagers from all over the Alirbazar area,
and also on market days with payment in cash from all comers. In fact, the
Hajipur barbers, with a constant store of rice received in jajmani-like pay-
ment from regular customers, are great creditors in rice lending. Similarly,
the jugi weavers (debonath) still practice their trade with some profit, as
do the younger and more able washermen, in the area at large. To the south
of Hajipur and Tinpara are villages dominated by potters (kumar), seen
daily trudging through Alirbazar with a shoulder-load of wares being taken
to town. Leather-workers from Comilla town make constant forays into the
Alirbazar area in search of hides.

In short, the lower-ranked Hindu artisan and serving castes still carry on
important functions in the rural and urban economies of East Pakistan and
while great emigration of Hindus appears to have obtained over the years
since Partition, there remains at least a minimal economic incentive for
these groups (in contrast to the higher castes) to stay.

20Nazmul Karim (1962: 141) comments with reference to patterns of social
stratification in Noakhali District that while historically a distinction
obtained between Ashraf and non-Ashraf classes, it was nonetheless acceptable
for an.Ashraf=titled person "to have marital ties with sat-gerastha or cul-
tivators who have no social stigma, i.e., those who do not belong to the
lowest strata ..." Given the proclivity of Hajipur and Tinpara villagers to
name any given homestead if possible when asked to do so, it seems reasonable
to conclude that the Sheikh and non-Sheikh distinction was not really rele-
vant (since nearly everyone is a Sheikh), but rather that if no special title
could apply, such a family would simply be labeled gerastha in the absence of
any title.

21The relationship of land ownership to creditor activities was tested with
Fishers Exact Test of the following hypothesis: creditor activities (lending
money, renting land out) are associated with land holdings above the median
amount at a statistically significant level. A positive relationship was
demonstrated at a level of p-.OO33.

22The relationship of complexion to standards of physical beauty, in Bengal
at least, is more subtle than commonly believed by Westerners familiar with
India, and thus draws my comment here. Sophisticated, Calcutta-oriented
Bengalis with whom I have discussed the question make a distinction between
the words pharsfi ("fair-skinned") and sander ("beautiful"), pointing out that
the latter word, when used to describe a person, is more general in meaning,
referring to the quality of physical features, as well as complexion. It is
thus common to attribute beauty to a person (especially a woman) whose physi-
cal features are pleasing but who is not "fair-skinned." For example, one
may describe such a person as follows: "sundar hay, kintu pharsa nay ("he
or she is beautiful, but not fair-skinned").

187

It is my impression, however, as a result of my own attempts to use the
word sander in its correct context (and often failing), that among villa-
gers, as well as townrbased "middle class" peOple in East Pakistan, the
above distinction is blurred. I relate an instance of this.

In the early days of my field work I was once engaged in a discussion

with hangerseon at an Alirbazar tea shop. The subject of marriage came up
and I queried at one point about the appropriate age of marriage for a

girl. One wag produced the following facetious response: "sakeb, is she

is sander, she will be snapped up at the age of 10; if not so sundar, she
shall have to wait until she is 13 or 14; but if she is black (sic), even

at age 30 she will not be married" (jodi REZB hacks, tiris barcar parjantya
tar biye habe n5). This response was met, needless to say, with peels of
laughter. What should be noted, however, is the juxtaposition of the words
sundar and kaza (black; "dark-skinned") in the speaker's sentence as deno-
ting Opposite qualities: sander (beautiful) versus kaza (black; "darke
skinned"). Now, there are two questions involved, one pertaining to "native
categories" of physical beauty, the other pertaining to what might be called
"prestige of the personage" and prestige derived from association with an-
other "prestigious personage." The questions are separate, but related.
With regard to the speaker's meaning as it might reflect native standards

of beauty, the following semantic analysis might be proposed:

sander : kEZB

beautiful : "dark-skinned"

 

hence beautiful : not-beautiful
fair-skin dark skin

But it has been noted that educated speakers of Bengali when asked will make

a distinction between fairness of complexion and physical beauty, that is,
between pharsa and sundar, insisting that there is no necessary relationship
between the two. Thus, to understand what my fellow tea shop conversationalist
had in mind, perhaps another "dimension of contrast" must be sought, that of
prestige.

I found it common for educated men of my acquaintance to refer in English to
their wives and daughters in some instances (and a bit embarassedly) as "my
black wife" or "my black daughter." Significantly, one of them referred to
his two-year old little girl as follows: "Oh, she is so black, she is ruining
all my prestige, but I love her so much I don't mind." Thus, whether or not
the female in question would be considered beautiful has nothing necessarily
to do with the fact that her dark complexion has implications not merely for
her "prestige of personage," but also and importantly for the social prestige
of males associated with her as either husband or father. Thus, the words
used by the amusing conversationalist might be semantically juxtaposed in
another simple contrast set:

sundar kaza

literally: beautiful : "dark-skinned"

188

implied: beautiful : not beautiful
hence: fair-skinned : dark-skinned
also: prestigious : not prestigious

The implication of this (admittedly divergent from the main point) foray
into "ethnoscience" is simply that color distinctions commonly made by
Bengalis with reference to all persons, and women in particular, relate
more to considerations of prestige than to abstract categories of physical
beauty. Thus, the translation of the tea shop humorist's answer to my
question might be glossed as follows: "If a girl is fair-skinned, she
will be desirable for marriage and thus likely to be married at an early
age; but because a dark-skinned girl is less prestigious, i.e., because
having her as a wife contributes nothing to a man's status honor, she will
be less desired as a marriage partner on that count alone and thus be mar-
ried at a later age."

Statistically speaking, however, my own data on age of marriage for women
indicate 14 years to be the average age of marriage. Moreover, despite their
adherence to the larger tendencies of the culture with respect to standards
of physical beauty and related matters of personal prestige, it is my impres-
sion that ordinary villagers in Hajipur and Tinpara are more significantly
concerned with economic and social status when it comes down to actual choice
of marriage partners.

23On the basis of genealogical analysis, I hypothesized that there would be

a systematic tendency for titled lineages to intermarry at a higher rate than
that at which gerastha lineages marry into them. They hypothesized relation-
ship between title and marriage proved to be statistically significant in cor-
relation using Fisher's Exact Test (p - .0079).

24The fact that a man who lives "uxorilocally" - the benighted ghar jamai -
usually accepts such a post-marital residence situation becuase of his own
unfortunate economic or social circumstances, but has no assurance that he
will get any of his father-in—law's property, and further is deprived of pas-
sing descent to his own children, seems to account for the universal opprob-
rium in Bengal in which ghar jamai status is held. There are many proverbs
which express the wisdom of the culture" in this regard, e.g.: "If one has
any brains, he does not work for his meals in his father-in-law's house"
(akkel thakle sbasfir-barite Rhete khay n5).

It might be suggested, moreover, that the anthropological term normally em-
ployed to describe this type of post-marital residence - uxorilocal (or "with
the wife") - probably does not aptly reflect Bengali thinking on the matter.
For the crucial relationship implied in the Bengali term for a man in such a
situation - ghar jamai ("a son-in-law who lives in his wife's father's home")
- is between the "resident" husband and his wife's father; the former loses
his right to transmit descent to his children. Moreover, a ghar jamai accepts
the authority of his father-in-law and, as the above-quoted proverb suggests,
is seen as "working for" him. This role relationship and implied subordinate
status is quite different from those which obtain when the more respectable
patrilocal residence norm is followed (see discussion in the text).

189

25Upon obtaining mauza maps, which clearly delineate land plots as they

stood at the time of the last settlement survey (in 1899), I used them of-
ten in the villages for the purpose of map-making and the location of pro-
perty held by my informants. I was often struck by the interest displayed

in these old maps by my village acquaintances and in a number of instances

I was asked if I had maps pertaining to other mauzas. When I queried as to
the reason for the interest, as often as not a man would state that through
some matrilateral or affinal connection either he, or his wife, had claim to
property in the mauza in question and, "if he only had a good map," the issue
as to who had just claim to the property could be profitably raised with
kinsmen currently claiming or utilizing it. I understand that a large number
of litigations in Comilla's civil courts involve just this kind of dispute
between kinsmen, although I did not collect data specifically on these cases.

26Calkins (1969), in a recent study, has shown that under the Mughals the
collection of revenue was characterized by the maximization of individual
self-enrichment at every level of the revenue system. "Cheating," he states
baldly, "was an expected and accepted part of the Mughal system." Conditions
of transportation and communication in 18th Century Bengal must have severely
limited the possibility of adequate check and surveillance at every level of
the revenue collection hierarchy. Thus, for the Mughal administrators, the
most efficient method - not to say the path of least resistance - may have
seemed to lie in allowing the men at each level to act in accordance with their
self-interest in the hope that eventually sufficient yields of revenue would
accrue to the ruling power. 4

Such a revenue system seems hardly to have provided a framework upon which a
socially responsible, humanely benevolent, and administratively competent
"squirearchy" could be grafted. Re-evaluation of the zamindari system under
the British is currently being undertaken, I am told, by historians. No
doubt newly conflicting interpretations will result. But if the research of
Calkins (and others who are focussing on later periods) influences the even-
tual conclusions regarding the zamindari system of the 19th Century, it may
be seen as an outstanding example of "cross-cultural" blundering in a program
of "planned" change. Given fairness toward the motivations of early British
administrators, this may come to be the most charitable view, divorced, of
course,.from the emphasis on economic exploitation with which Indian nationa-
list historians have traditionally viewed the Permanent Settlement.

27Orthodox Islamic law stipulates that for a man to remarry his divorced wife
she must first wait a period of 90 days ("until she has passed her course
thrice"), then remarry another man, be divorced by him, wait another 90 days,
until finally she can remarry her first husband once again.‘

28Under the Comilla project system, village coOperative societies are directly
linked to a (Kotwali Thana) Central Cooperative Association, which has a bank
for the deposit of their savings and dispensation of loans to members, runs
programs in the teaching of improved agricultural techniques, and generally
administers a thana-wide cooperative system. At the village level, coopera-
tive groups are run by an elected Managing Committee. Its officers are desig-
nated as: Chairman, Vice Chairman, Manager, "Model Farmer," and two elected

at large from the membership. The effective administrative office is that of
the Manager, who is expected to take a preponderant role in the organization of

190

the group and its activities. It should be noted that he is responsible
for the collection of members' savings and depositing them in the Central
Cooperative bank. The "Model Farmer" is elected to attend the classes in

improved agricultural practices and he is expected to transmit their content
to the general membership.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agrarian Reform Law of the People's Republic of China
1947 How to analyze class status in the countryside. In Hinton (1966:
Appendix C).

Ali Akhtar Khan
1968 Rural credit in Gazipur village. Comilla: Pakistan Academy for
Rural DevelOpment.

.A.T.R. Rahman . .
1962 Basic democracies and rural development. Journal of the Pakistan
Academy for Rural Development 3:103-122.

Bailey, F.G.
1960 Tribe, caste and nation. Manchester University Press.

1963 Politics and social change: Orissa in 1959. University of California
Press.

Barth, Frederik
1960 The system of social stratification in Swat, North Pakistan. In
E.A. Leach, ed., Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-
west Pakistan. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology. No. 2:113-136.

Beech, Mary Jane, Peter J. Bertocci and Lauren A. Corwin
1965- Introducing the East Bengali village. In Inside the East Pakistan
66 Village - Six Articles. Michigan State University. Asian Studies
Center. Asian Studies Papers. Reprint series No. 2:1-18.

Berreman, Gerald D. '
1968 Ethnography: method and product. In James A. Clifton, ed.,
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Houghton—Mifflin. pp. 336-373.

Beteille, Andre
1965 Caste, class and power: changing patterns of social stratification in
a Tanjore village. University of California Press.

Beverly, H. a
1875 Census of Bengal 1972. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.

Beveridge, H.
1876 The district of Backerganj: its history and statistics. Calcutta:
Bengal Secretariat Press.

191

192

Calkins, Philip
1969 Collecting the revenue in early eighteenth century Bengal: from
the cultivator to the zaminder. Paper read at the Fifth Annual
Conference on Bengal. Cited and quoted with permission.

Census of Pakistan
1961 District census report: Camilla. Parts I—V. Karachi: Government
of Pakistan Manager of Publications.

Cohn, Bernard S.
1955 The changing status of a depressed caste. In McKim Marriott,
ed., Village India: Studies in the Little Community. University
of Chicago Press. pp. 53-77.

1968 Notes on the history of the study of Indian society and culture.
In Milton Singer and Bernard 8. Cohn, eds., Structure and Change
in Indian Society. Aldine. pp. 3-28.

Cumming, J.G.
1899 Survey and settlement of the Chakla Roshnabad estate in the dis-
tricts of Tipperah and Noakhali 1892-1899.

Dasgupta, Shashibhusan
1962 Obscure religious cults. Calcutta: Firms K.L. Mukhapadhay.

Dev, A.T.
1963 Student's favourite dictionary (Bengali-English). Decca: Abdur
Rashid, publisher (19th Edition).

Eglar, Zekiye
1958 A Punjabi village in Pakistan. Columbia University Press.

Fairchild, Henry W. and Shamsul Huq
1961 A new rural cooperative system for Comilla thana. Comilla: Pakistan
Academy for Rural Development. 'Rural Cooperative Pilot Experiment.
First Annual Report.

Farkhunde Akter
1966a Production of aus rice in Comilla Kotwali Thana, 1965. Camilla:
Pakistan Academy for Rural Development. Research Section. Research
and Survey Bulletin No. 19.

1966b Production of amon rice in Comille Kotwali Thana, 1965. Comilla:
Pakistan Academy for Rural Development. Research Section. Research
and Survey Bulletin No. 10.
Fazlur, Rashid Khan
1962 The caste system in the village of Dhulandi in the district of
Decca. In John E. Owen, ed., Sociology in East Pakistan. Decca:
Asiatic Society of Pakistan. pp. 205-232.

Fortes, Meyer
1953 The structure of unilineal descent groups. American Anthropologist
55: 17-41.

193

Gait, E.A.
1901 Census of India 1901. Volume VI and VI-B. The lower provinces
of Bengal and their Feudatories. Part 1. Chapter 11, pp. 439-452.
Part III, pp. 62—123. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.

Gallin, Bernard
1960 Matrilateral and affinal relationships of a Taiwanese village.
American Anthropologist 62: 632—642.

1968 Political factionalism and its impact on Chinese village school
organization in Taiwan. In Marc J. Swartz, ed., Local Level Poli-
tics. Aldine. pp. 377-400.

Gankovsky, Y.V. and L.R. Gordon-Polonskaya
1964 A history of Pakistan. Moscow: "Nauka" Publishing House.

Geertz, Clifford
1959 Form and variation in Balinese village structure. American
Anthropologist 61: 991-1012.

1968 Agricultural involution: the processes of ecological change in
Indonesia. University of California Press (paper edition; original
1963).

Ghaus Ansari
1956 Muslim caste in India. Eastern Anthropologist 9: 104-111.

1959- Muslim caste in Uttar Pradesh: a study in culture contact. Eastern
60 Anthropologist 13: 1-83.

Gluckman, Max
1961 Ethnographic data in British social anthropology. Sociological
ReV1ew, 11.8. 9: 5'17.

Cough, Kathleen,
1968- Peasant resistance and revolt in South India. Pacific Affairs

Gould, Harold A.
1969 Toward a "jati" model for Indian politics. Economic and Political
Weekly IV: 291-297.

Guha, Uma
1965 Caste among rural Bengali muslims. Man in India 45: 167-169.

Hamza Alavi
1965 Peasants and revolution. Socialist Register II: 241-277.

Haroun Er Rashid
1965 East Pakistan: a systematic regional geography and its development
planning aspects. Lahore: Sh. Ghulam Ali and Sons.

194

Hinton, William
1966 Fanshen: a documentary of revolution in a Chinese village. Knopf.

Hobsbawm, E.J.
1965 Primitive rebels: studies in archaic forms of social movement in

the 19th and 20th centuries. Norton edition. (Original Praegar
edition 1959).

Hunter, W.W.
1876 A statistical account of Bengal. Volume 6.

Imtiaz Ahmed
1967 The ashraf and ajlef categories in Indo-muslim society. Economic

and Political Weekly II: 887-890.

Inden, Ronald
1967 The Hindu chiefdom in middle Bengali literature. In Edward C.
Dimock Jr., ed., Bengal: Literature and History. Michigan State
University Asian Studies Center. Occasional Papers. pp. 21-46.

Inden, Ronald and Edward C. Dimock Jr.
1970 Problems of transliteration in Bengali studies. In Alexander
Lipski, ed., Bengal East and west. Michigan State University.
Asian Studies Center. South Asia Series. Occasional Paper'
No. 13. pp. 13-17.

Kalimuddin Ahmed
1965 Agriculture in East Pakistan. Decca: Ahmed Bros. Publication.

Klass, Morton
1966 Marriage rules in Bengal. American Anthropologist 68: 951-970.

Kolenda, Pauline
1967 Regional differences in Indian family structure. In Robert 1.
Crane, ed., Regions and Regionalism in South Asian Studies: An
Exploratory Study. Duke University Program in Comparative Studies
on Southern Asia. Monograph No. 5. pp. 147-226.

Lefebvre, Henri
1969 The sociology of Marx. Vintage edition (original French edition
1966, Presses Universitaires de France; Sociologie de Marx).

Levy , Reuben
1965 The social structure of Islam. Cambridge University Press (origi-
nally published 1957).

Lewis, Oscar
1965 Village life in Northern India. Vintage edition. (original 1958,
Knopf).

M. Amirul Islam
n.d. Soil survey in East Pakistan. Unpublished mimeo. Comille: Pakistan
Academy for Rural Development.

195

MMA. Islam and W. Islam
1956 Nutrient status of East Pakistan soils. Decca: East Pakistan
Government Press.

M.A. Khan
‘ 1965 The Fara'idi movement. Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society.

Mao Tse-tung
1927 Analysis of the classes in Chinese society. In Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung I: 13-21. Peking: Foreign Languages Press 1965.

1933 How to differentiate the classes in the rural areas. In ibid.

Mayer, Adrian C.
1960 Caste and kinship in Central India: a village and its region.
Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Mitre, Subal Chandra
1923 The student's Bengali-English dictionary. New Bengal Press.

Morrison, Barrie M.
1969 Region and subregion in pre-Muslim Bengal. In David Kopf, ed.,
Bengal Regional Identity. Michigan State University. Asian Studies
Center. Occasional Paper. South Asia Series. pp. 3-19.

Nafis Ahmed
1968 An economic geography of East Pakistan. Oxford University Press
(second edition).

Nair, Kusum
1969 The lonely furrow. University of Michigan Press.

Nazmul Karim, A.K.
1956 Changing society in India and Pakistan. Decca: Ideal Publications.

1962 Social stratification patterns among the Muslims of certain dis-
tricts in East Pakistan. In John E. Owen, ed., Sociology in East
Pakistan. Decca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan. pp. 233-255.

Nicholas, Ralph W.
1961 Economics of family types in two West Bengal villages.l Economic
Weekly 13: 1057-1960.

1962 Villages of the Bengal delta: a study of ecology and peasant society.
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Chicago.

1963 Ecology and village structure in deltaic West Bengal. Economic
Weekly 15: 1185-1196. (pages cited in text from reprint in Ishino,
at. al. Seven Articles on Village Conditions, M.S.U. Asian Studies
Center. Asian Studies Papers. Reprint series No. 1, 1965-66, pp.
41-55).

196

1968a Structures of politics in the villages of southern Asia. In
Milton Singer and Bernard 8. Cohn, eds., Structure and Change
in Indian Society. Aldine. pp. 243-254.

1968b Rules, resources and political activity. In Marc J. Swartz, ed.
Local Level Politics. Aldine. pp. 295-322.

1969 Islam and vaishnavism in rural Bengal. In David Kopf, ed.,
Bengal Regional Identity. Michigan State University. Asian
Studies Center. Occasional Paper. pp. 33—47.

Nizam Uddin Ahmed
1962 The Laue community. In John E. Owen, ed., Sociology in East
Pakistan. Decca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan. pp. 233-255.

O'Donnell, C.J.
1891 Census of India 1891. Volume III. The lower provinces of Bengal
and their feudatories. Chapter XV. Castes tribes and races.
Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press. pp. 250-270.

Opler, Morris E. .
1956 The extensions of an Indian village. Journal of Asian Studies
16: 5-100

Pakistan Census of Agriculture
1960 East Pakistan. Volume 1. Government of Pakistan. Ministry of
Food and Agriculture.

Porter, A.E.
1933 Census of India 1931. Volume V. Bengal and Sikkim. Part I.
Calcutta: Central Publication Branch.

Qadir, S.A.
1960 Village Dhaniswar: three generations of man-land adjustment in
an East Pakistan village. Comilla: Pakistan Academy for Rural
Development. Technical Publication No. 5.

Rehman Sobhan
1968 Basic democracies works programme and rural development in East
Pakistan. University of Decca Bureau of Economic Research.

S.A. Rahim
1965 Communication and personal influence in an East Pakistan village.
Comilla: Pakistan Academy for Rural Development.

Schultz, Theodore W.
1965 Economic crises in world agriculture. University of Michigan Press.

Sen , Bhowani
1947 The tebhaga movement in Bengal. Communist I: 121-131.

Sinha, Narendra Krishna
1962 The economic history of Bengal from Plassey to the permanent settle-
ment. Volume II. Calcutta: Firms K.L. Mukhapadhay.

197

Skinner, G. William
1965 Marketing and social structure in rural China. Part I.
Journal of Asian Studies 24: 3-43.

Smith, Marion W.
1946 Village notes from Bengal. American Anthropologist 48: 574-592.

1955 Social Structure in the Punjab. In India's Villages. West
Bengal Government Press. pp. 144-160.

Sophur, David E.
1963 Papulation dislocation in the Chittagong hill tracts. Geograph-
ical Review LIII: 338-362.

Srinivas, M.N. and A.M. Shah
1960 The myth of the self-sufficiency of the Indian village. Economic
Weekly 12: 1375—1378.

Steward, Julian H.
1955 Theory of culture change. University of Illinois Press.

Swartz, Marc J.
1968 Local level politics. Aldine.

Tepper, Elliott
1966 Changing patterns of administration in rural East Pakistan.
Michigan State University. Asian Studies Center. Occasional
Paper No. 5.

Thompson, W.H.
1923 Census of India 1921. Volume V. Bengal. Parts I and 11. Cal-
cutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot.

Turner, V.W.
1957 Schism and continuity in an African society. Manchester Univer-
sity Press.

Webster, J.E.
1910 Tippera. Bengal District Gazetteers.

Wharton, Clifton R. Jr.
1969 The green revolution: cornucopia or Pandora's box? Foreign
Affairs 47: 463-476.

Wise,“James*
1874 On the barah bhuiyas of eastern Bengal. Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal XLIII. Part I. No. III: 197-214.

1903 The Muhammedans of eastern Bengal. Journal of the Asiatic Society
of Bengal LXIII, LXV, and LXVII. Part III. No. 1: 463-476.

WOlf, Eric R. ,
1959 Sons of the shaking earth. University of Chicago Press.

1966 Peasants. Prentice-Hall.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

Glossary

Indic words which in the text have not been transliterated are transliterated

and explained here.

Dimock (1970) as closely as possible.
ated spellings are those of Dev (1963).

Words as in Text

abastha
adhar
adhiar
Ajlaf
amin

8111011

811118

ashol
Ashraf
ataliya, atal
atiyo

8118

baliya, bele

Transliteration

abesthE
adhsr
adhiar
ajlaph
5min; 3min

amen

anna

asal

Seraph
ataliya, 5.31
atmiyo

Ens

baliya, bele

198

The system of transliteration follows that of Inden and
Also, where possible, the transliter-

Translation

condition; situation

half

sharecropper; from adhar
low-born (Muslim)

surveyor

A wet-rice growing season;
specifically from ca. July
-November

A sub-denomination of the
rupee prior to post-Inde-
pendence decimalization;
still used; 16 annas-R.l.
real, genuine

noble; high-born (Muslim)
a type of soil

kinsmen (general)

A wet-rice growing season;
specifically ca. March-
July.

a type of soil

bandak
bargadar
bari

bate

bel

bhadra, bhadrashan

bhagina
bhagini

bhiaderi

bichar

boro

burka

Baishnab

chal

chanda

Chandal

chula

chutar

199

bandak

bargadar

bel

bhadra, bhadrasan

bhagina
bhagini

bhiaderi

baisnab

cal

canda

candal

cu1§

chutar

mortgage
sharecrOpper
homestead

a bamboo lath, used as
slat in home-building

woodapple fruit

a division of the
homestead

sister's son
sister's daughter

endogamous grouping among
Ashraf'status groups; es-
pecially N. India, Punjabi
Muslims

judgement; trial

a growing season; ca.
December-March

veil; face and body cover
for Muslim women observing

purdah

Veishnevite; worshipper of
Vishnu, more specifically
Krishna

husked rice

dues; fees; subscription
money

common name for a major
cultivating and fishing
caste, Hindu, of Bengal,
especially East Bengal;
see Namasudra

hearth; oven; a division
of the homestead

carpenter caste, Hindu;
see also sutradhar

dak

Debonath

do-as.

dohitro

ghar

ghar jemai

gomostha

goswami

gram

grihasti, gerastha

gusthi

hadith

hajjam

Haliya Kaibartta

hat

200

dak

debanath

do-as

dowhitro

ghar

ghar jamai

gEmasta

ngvai

gram

(Snskt.) grihastha

guethi

hadis

thjEm

hfiliyo koibarto

call (n); as used adjec-

tivally in text, 'so-
called"

preferred caste name
of jugi weavers

a type of soil; sandy
loam

daughter's son, children

literally, room; in
rural context, household
dwelling

daughter's husband who
lives in her natal.home;

a man living "uxorilocal-
ly;" as in text: "resident
son-in-law"

a revenue collection agent
of a zamindar-

usually, a Vaishnava reli-
gious teacher; as in text,
the name of priests to the
jugi weavers; see also,
mahatma

village

local pronunciation; liter-
ally, householder; in rural
context, an "ordinary person'
but respectable

patrilineal kin group,
Bengali Muslim especially

Traditional books of Muslim
law, based on utterances of
the Prophet

circumcisor

a wide-spread cultivating
caste in Bengal; see also

Mahisya

local market

hat heyat

heyat

hingsha

hishya

hookah

Id

’Idgah

Id-ul-Azha

Id-ul-Fitra

ijara

ijaradar

imam

izzat

Jaista

jajmani

jamai

201
ha: heyat
heyat
hinsa

hisya

buke
Id, Id
Idgah, Idgah

Idul Ajha

Idul Phitra

ijara

ijarfidar

imam

ijjat
joiystha

jajmani

j§m§1

a "water shovel" used
in irrigating

a two-man swing basket
used in irrigating

greed, envy; interpersonal
malice

same as bhadra

a water pipe for smoking
tobacco; "hubble bubble"

Islamic religious holi-
days; see below

special field for celebra-
tion of Id prayers only

commemorates Abraham's sac-
rifice; also called Kbrbani
Id

commemorates the end of

fasting during Ramadan;

also the day for payment
of yearly religious tax

(zakat); a feast day

system of revenue collection
in Comille thana; the col-
lection agency for taxes due
on land held by a commercial
bank

one who holds rights to
collect rents under the
ijara system

mosque congregation leader

personal honor; status
honor

Bengali month, from ca.
May 15 to June 15

system of hereditary, economic
patron-client relationships
between individual families of
different castes

son-in-law; see ghar jamai

jat, jati

jolaha

jomadar

kacha

kachari ghar

kammi

kani

Kartik

khal

khana

khas
khasai
kobiraj

kotwali

kumar

lajja

202

35c, jati

1615

jomadar

kacca

kacari ghar

(Hindi) kammi

kani

kartik

khal

khana

khas
kasEi
kabiraj

katayali

kumar

lajja

caste, race, nation,
ethnic group; usually
refers to a subceste

Muslim weaver

a tenure-holder; low-level
revenue collection agent
in the zamindari system

literally, raw, uncooked;
with reference to roads,
unpaved; with reference to
building construction, no
concrete or steel; in gen-
eral, "low quality"

guest room

literally, worker; refer-
ence to Muslim serving
castes in N. India, Punjab
a unit of land measurement;
in Comilla area, .40 acre;

varies elsewhere

Bengali month, from ca.
October 15 to November 15

canal

food; in social context,
"eating group," a division
of the homestead referred to
in text as household; see
also ctha

untenanted land

butcher

native doctor

refers to the thana in
which district headquarters
are located

potter caste, Hindu

shyness, shame; refers to
norms of feminine modesty

lungi

madhye—bangso

madrassa
maghribi namaz

mahajan

mahatma

maharana

maher

mahfil

Mahisya

mama
masjid

maund

mel

methar

milat

momin

203

lungi

madhya~bafiso

madrasa
maghribi namaj

mahajan

mahatma

maharana
mahar

mahphil

mahisya

mel

methar

millat

momin

anke-length waistcloth worn
nearly universally by
Bengali Muslim (men) pea-
sants as daily dress

a lineage of middle rank
in status

Islamic school
evening prayer, Muslim

literally, "big man;"
generally refers to a
patron, creditor; speci-
fically, money-lender

"Great Soul;" the name
preferred by the priests
of the jugi weavers; see
goswami

bride-price; see also maker
see maharana

musical gathering, usually
religious

cultivating caste; see
HaZiya Kaibartta

mother's brother
mosque

a unit of weight measure-
ment used for grain; ca.
82 lbs.

compromise

Hindu sweeper caste common
in East Bengal

community; Muslim religious
community or group

"believer;" term of self-

reference to denote Muslim
status

Mughal

muni

mustajir

naib

Namasudra

namaz

napit

naya paisa

nichu—bangso

pan

Pathan

Paundra Kshatriya

Pod

204

MSgal

muni

mustajir

nayib

namahéudra

nemaj

napit

naya poise

niccu-befiéo

pan

pathan

powndro kshetriyo

pad

Islamic rulers of non-
Indian origin whose rule
lasted from the 16th to
18th centuries; a high
status title in Muslim
Bengal; one of the Ashraf
categories

day-labor for wages

an official in the
Mughal revenue system

an official in the
zamindari system of
revenue collection

cultivating and fishing
Hindu caste; see Chandal

prayer (Muslim usage)

barber caste, Hindu;
see siZ
"new pice;" smallest unit
of the decimalized rupee;
100 paisa a R.1

a lineage of low rank in
status

betel leaf

ethnic group of the North-
west Frontier; but generally
used in Bengal with refer-
ence to Afghans and the des-
cendents of their rule in
India in the 15th Century;
refers historically in
Bengal to any group of
foreign, but non-Mughal,
origin; one of the high
status Ashraf categories

preferred sanskritized

title of the Pods, an impor-
tant cultivating caste,
Hindu, in Bengal

see Paundra Kshatriya

poribar

pukka

pukur

purdah

puskarini

Raj

raja

Ramadan

reyai

salish

samaj

sari

Sayad

seer

205

paribar

pakka

pukur

parda

(Snskt.) puskarini

raj

raja

ramajan

reyai

55113

samaj

ser

family; "wife and child-
ren;" general reference to
one's family of procreation

literally, ripe; cooked;
with reference to roads,
paved; to buildings, of
concrete construction, in
general, "high quality"

pond; "tank"

literally, screen, perti-
tion; social reference is

to the practice of seclusion
of women

pond; "tank;" see above,
pukur; this form most often
used by Comilla villagers

rule; reign
king; ruler

Islamic month during
which day-time feasting
is enjoined

a social grouping in
Comilla villages

arbitrator in a dispute;
colloquially, an arbitra-
tion

society; association;

a social grouping of
several villages and

their sub-units in Comilla
thana

women's standard dress
one of the four Ashraf
categories; denotes direct

descent from the Prophet

a sub-division of the
maund

Shab-e-Barat

shewara

Sheikh

tahsil

tahsildar
tahsil kachari

terabi namaz

thakur

thana

"toli"

ucho-bangso

HIS

zakat

206

sabe bErEt

sekh

tahasil, tahsil
tasil

tahsildar
tahsil kEcEri

terabi namaj
thakur

thana

tali
ucco-bafiéo

urus (?)

jakat

Islamic holiday associ-
ated with the beginning
of the new year

a small tree (trophis
aspara); because it often
grows near cremation
grounds it is popularly
associated with ghosts

one of the four Ashraf
categories; denotes des-
cent from the tribe of
the prOphet

collection of taxes; an
administrative unit come
parable to the thana

(of East Pakistan) in
use in West Pakistan

tax-collector
tax collection office

special prayer during
Ramadan.
"leader;" commonly used

as appelation for Brahmans

administrative unit it
East Pakistan's Basic
Democracies system; po-
lice station

"at the foot of" a tree,
plant (suffix)

a lineage of high rank
in status

a religious gathering,

usually to meet or hear
a well known religious

person

religious tax the payment
of which for purposes of
charity is enjoined on
Muslims deemed wealthy
enough to pay it

207

zamindar jomidar landlord

zamindari jomidari a landlord's estate

APPENDIX II

Family Types and Land Ownership Types

Table l in this appendix classifies the various types of land ownership
arrangements in Hajipur and Tinpara. It will be noted that I attempt in
this table a more discrete classification than that afforded by a simple
"individual versus joint" dichotomy. The aim in so doing is accurately to
reflect the technicalities of land ownership in each case, since actual
legal ownership in each case, since actual legal ownership of land by women
as well as men is a matter of some consequence in these villages. Thus,
for example, a man may live in a single household with his wife and child-
ren, cultivating his own land as well as any which may be registered in
her name. While such a household is in effect a single owner farm as an
economic unit, the legalities of ownership are important.

Table 2 here compares land ownership with corresponding household types.
It will be seen here that by far the largest single correspondence (in

43 out of 104 cases) is that between the nuclear family household and the
single (individual farm) ownership of land. Although there is considera-
ble variation, a general tendency may be seen for landless and single own-
ership families to be nuclear or sub-nuclear in type, while joint owner-
ship seems in most instances to be associated with lineal or collateral
joint family types.

These data, then, generally corroborate findings on the relationship
between land ownership and family type found elsewhere in Bengal (Nicholas
1961) and in South Asia generally (Kolenda 1967). The well known process
of household build-up and subsequent partition is substantiated for this
part of East Bengal as well. Here, as elsewhere, a man retains his agri-
cultural land at least until his sons are old enough to cultivate on

their own - and often beyond that oint. However, some fathers, as they
grow older, may begin the process of devolving "ownership" to their sons,
often initially be registering it in their names with the understanding
that the fathers are still "owners" and the sons have no independent
rights to usage or sale. This procedure is carried out usually to insure
against the possibility that any daughters who marry out will not attempt
to inherit, since as long as the land is in the sons' names, the applica-
tion of Muslim law regarding women's rights to inheritance would be diffi-
cult, since the patrimony would haVe already been distributed.

As shown generally in Table 2, the "rise and fall" process is reflected in

the predominance of single ownership cross-cutting nuclear, lineal and
collateral joint household types, and in the existence of examples of

208

209

 

 

 

Lam an emcee Has LsLaQ+aa+aLv w a we H Lass
Ash .oaaa pmmdam he dosao Hamv n o 51 N
aeASLam+aQ+oav 5A Heswmss o z .HDLSm H LGLLLLOLL
L a L 0L
n a L a
LA Heaven: 0 ha . w
Lama on w z .HLLSL a
m m Lupsm @
n a L m
w m L a
m m L m
n m L N
n m L L! Leno LLLL
LsL .maaa smodas Ln emcee Lacy a ma mug L
m m L m
L m L m
n i a 3
n L L .HLLsm m
w o L m
LaL Loans ammuao LL Lasso Hasv a 0L ma L Lsom Lease
Ls. L» s 01 .oa+sLL we as names OH we LL
AUQHLL chS H .mwfiLLaE H .m. an NV 0 m z .Hgmzm OH
m m L a
m o L w
m m L .HQQSm m
n m L m
m o L .HLLsm m
m m we a
LHL+LLL m .:LL m ca hoe m
w a L N
A02 + m .Lmv Log 5 z .Hmesm H Lamfissa
«H......Q H... WU
Lofipaasmom mmLB % eaox I:
*mLLL Laameozeo ease eaozsmsom eaosomsom :mmsom osmpmosom
.LL>L LH.:_u:Lo LLea OLL 230.1)Lor ”<LLLLHL LLL LLLHLLL

 

 

. .mfl.aau.-n..1-7ufiJ ~a-a ~ ~v.‘ Alu-nenu~§eu- -,\.\.U~g-.....v~av~w llflvu...~.~fl..v\\.

 
 

u... ... v :1 14 x x

210

 

 

 

 

mama on 0 ha a
w m L
L m Lnnsm m
flow as LmoE .om+oxv hq Hmswmse a z .Hmmsw H Lfixsm
LLLSLsL+aLv m .HLLsm m L .HLLsm a
L. L. .... *m. 1H m z m
. ....L.......L..x..m.1H 0 Z N
A0m0m+om an pmofiv hog HaScoLs m hog H mmmfinom
LsL .masa smouam an Lasso Hasv m CH hog s
n m L m
w 3 Z . N
LLLsmsq+sL+aLv ma L L .Hacsm H LLmssL
w 3 Linda m .
m 0 LL H Lanssm Lsmmmmm
w m L 0H
AsL LL Lmos .om+aLv he Lessons La we a
ALL+5LL m .HLLsm m be m
fined 0L H m a
m m L o
n a L m
UQMH OS 3 E 3
m m z..HLm5m m
1*Asmaa+sn+on+aLL woe .HLLsm LL hog m
##1LLLLL + sassy m .HLLsm : L .HLLSm L LawssnaL
soapmasmOm meme & GHQ: .11
amaze eflgmhmszo aged dacSmmdom daonmmsom nmmsom uawpmmfiom
UOSCMQCOMV rHH 0424....fll- 111""

 

.IIIII'IIII

 

 

 

Aeoafizv m H m a
A.Hhae meoLLwLHom .Q.QVLAH3+smV m .Hemdm m z m
. m m L m
Lam Ln pmos .on+aLL he Hasaogs OH ea H LHL psae
ABOdHBV anH on H m m
m m L m
w 0 ......H 3
n m L m
AHL+LLV m .HLLsm N L m
Ham no: .ow Ln amazov m m wH H H< emfisamoe
LHL+LLV m .HLLsm m L m
m m L m
a H w H Laxamg LL
agaH on m Lungs m
m L L L
m m z .HQQSm m
Am.LoLLmH LeaH .m.om HHaem m +oLL Lo m ansm m
.m Aom+oz hH m z .HQmSm H caaxmm LSHNQL
m L L m
m L 2- m
AHn dmaowHa+mHeEV m .Haezm m z .HQLSm H HHL Lageanm
m L a OH
n m L m
m .3 71 w
a a L L
. m .14 R w
m 3 ./ m
m. m 2 AH
AvoHLLsELS H .deLLmE H .m.Lm NV ho @ z .HQLSw m
m L L m
h w L H Hmmo aLaflll
. aLspL 5
LOHpmHsmom meme L @Hoz
Loam? mszLmsao snag dHonmmsom UHonomsom nmmSom esopmano

omngpcoo .H mHnaL

—

v.-o\.

..‘~z....

-

n

..J~H

‘o.\wa.v<~mwx

..~_.J,«

-~

mmeoa m.H

UHomeSOL Lee mNHm

LLHLHOL

LLLH omen pa

‘

 

 

Lam LOH namwuw
mLsH on N Elena H Lona:
m L L .HLLSm m
m m 7 H LoxLonoom
u c 1.1 4..) q.
2 m .3. L H “we... 5.6.0.50
AaodHav @LmH on H m a
assH on m L m
w H m N
fisaH 0L m 2 H LoLhosmmL
HLoLeosLoL .on .LLLE LLHS H .m.Ln NV 60 :H 50H m
a a Linea N
AH3+smv m .HQLSm L L H meeopaao.
hog 0H 60H H LHammom Hand
m a L m
m m L a
@LmH 0L m z .HLLSL m
m m L m
m L LL H HHL Lagma
QOHDmHSQom meme % eHos
amaze LHLmHoQSO msaq GHOSmmSom UHosomSQm Immsom mdmpmmfiom

213

Table l: Egplanatory Notes

Household types taken from categories as defined by Xolenda (1967: 149-50)

*Land

Single gsg: single person household

Sub-nuclear (SUbel} fragment of a former nuclear family, e.g., a
widow plus unmarried children

Nuclear (N): Hu¥Wi+unmarried children

Supplemented nuclear (suppl. N): Nuclear family plus unmarried adult
kin, e.g., widowed or unmarried Br or Si of flu or Wi

Lineal Joint (LJ): Parents plus 1 married So or Da

Lineal Collateral Joint (LCJ): Parents plus married children, So's
and/or Da's

N.B. Other types are possible, e.g., Collateral (joint among Br's)
but do not occur in this sample (see Kolenda 1967).

Ownership Types

Single SS}: 1 person owner

g§upplemented single (suppl. S): 1 person owns most of the land, but
also farms that of kinsmen or effines which technically he does
not own, i.e., it is not in his name

Collateral JointngJ): joint ownership of land by brothers

Supplemented Collateral Joint (guppl. CJ): joint ownership of most
land by brothers, who also farm land owned by co-residents in
the household

Lineal Joint (LJ): Joint ownership between Fa and 1 So or Da, equal
shares

Unequal Lineal Joint (unequal Lg): Joint ownership between Fa + So
or Be, where one party, usually Fa, retains the major share,
except where indicated in Table 1. This category created to
show the process of gradual devolution of land from Fa to So,
discussed in the text.

Lineal Collateral Joint (LCJ): Joint ownership among Fa plus So's
and/or Da's; may be equal or unequal

214'

**Cases in which daughters have been given or otherwise obtained land:

Hajipur Khondakar #1: Widow with Married Da+DaHu resident; the land
has passed from the Widow to the De who has listed most of it
in her Hu's name.

Hajipur Majumdar #2: Fa+So (who works away from village +’Da + DaHu;
the latter is.a service holder from another district; Fe and So
are joint owners, but some land given to De; DaHu purchased land
locally, put some of it in Da's (his wife's) name.

Hajipur Munshi #1: Fa (himself a ghar jamai) + Da + DaHu (the latter
also a "ghar jamai" who is Da's cross-cousin, resident in the
household of Fe); the land passes from Fe (who got it from his
WiBr) to Da and then to DaHu, who is FaWiBrSo; a complicated
full circle in which the land is retained in the original house-
hold.

Hajipur Haji #1: Fa (himself a ghar jamai) + Da + DaHu; in this
case all the land is owned by Da who will pass it directly to
her children.

Hajipur Kobiraj 34: Fe retains all his own land; DaHu a ghar jamai
who owns land in his natal village.

Other cases warranting special explanation:

***Hajipur Majumdar #1: Owners are household head (male) + his BrWi;
this situation could perhaps equally be classified as collateral
joint, since the household head farms the land by his BrWi;
although she is from the same village (Hajipur Munshi Bari), she
remains as a widow in her Hu's homestead, since she inherited
land from her Ru, has only one Be who married out; the arrange-
ment benefits her HuBr.

****Haiipur Kobiraj #2 and #3: A case in which there is lineal joint
ownership between Fa + So, but separate households; rare

215

H>wfim N

mommm50Hm mom Home ozdmnmer Hmem ooawmamm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmoa osomwmev\ OOHH.
mmBHwamwwm 505m mHo. mam. m HHD. an. comm. bu moms Hm Hog HOHDn Hoanm

mHomHm wmflmoo b w I I I I I I H
mcclzconmH N b I I I I I H u
ZCOHmmH w mm b N* I I I I mm
mcva. zanme N m w I N I H N Hm
fiwsmmH HOHSn H b H I b I I I Ho
HHDmmH OOHH. QOHDn I N N I H H H H m
Hoanm Hm mm Ho N u H N b zuHOb

xnmmm om bHommH uoHon osomnmrwv omnsmmn N mmvmnmnm rocmmronm.

216

lineal joint, both unequal and supplemented, types of ownership. The varia-
tion evident in Table 2 reflects the position different families at differ-
ent stages in the overall process. It should be further noted that collat-
eral joint ownership - joint ownership among brothers - is rare and can be
a stage in the process of transfer of ownership in which a man has given
land to two or more adult sons,.while still.retaining a share for himself.

Thus, the general correspondence between types of farm ownership and types
of household shows the process of transition referred to in the main text.
Single owner farms based on the nuclear family predominate, with a number

of joint owner farms built around supplemented nuclear and joint families
also present. That this general correspondence also reflects the manpower
needs and division of labor on each type of farm need hardly be pointed out;
the patterns of arrangements reflected here seem to be consistent with those
characteristics of peasant societies generally (see Wblf 1966: 61-81).

1104mm smTE UNIV. LIsRnRIEs
1|1WI"H“!"IWWII”I.”Ill"Hm"WWW"
31293000987606