Nepal Tarai Agrarian society in the Nepal Tarai was created through the interaction of ecology, conquest, revenue policy, land reclamation, migration, tenancy and local intermediaries. The region cannot be described accurately by importing the Permanent Settlement model from British India or by treating terms such as raikar, birta, jagir and jimidari as interchangeable forms of landlord ownership. This chapter reconstructs the layered land regime of the Tarai, with particular attention to Saptari, Siraha, Dhanusha–Mahottari and the wider eastern plains, and follows its transformation from late-eighteenth-century revenue experiments through the land-reform legislation of the 1950s and 1960s. 67.1 Land history requires separating tenure, taxation and cultivation A single field could carry several distinct relationships at once: the state might claim land revenue; a grantee might receive that revenue under birta or another assignment; a village intermediary might collect dues; and an actual cultivator might hold occupancy, tenancy or customary claims. Colonial and later administrative vocabulary often tempts historians to collapse these layers into a simple opposition between landlord and peasant. Nepal’s records require greater precision. Tenure describes the legal or fiscal basis of a claim; taxation describes obligations to the state or assignee; cultivation describes who actually worked the soil. Agrarian class emerged from the interaction of all three, not from a label alone. 67.2 The Tarai was an agrarian zone shaped by water, forest and disease as much as by law The plains south of the Chure were highly productive but environmentally uneven. River migration, seasonal inundation, wetlands, sal forest and malaria affected where permanent cultivation could expand and how easily officials could measure holdings. Eastern districts such as Saptari and Mahottari contained old cultivated zones as well as forest, scrub and waste lands that states sought to bring under assessment. Reclamation was therefore both an ecological process and a fiscal project. A plot became economically valuable to the state only when settlement, labour, drainage and cropping could convert it into a dependable stream of revenue. 67.3 Gorkha expansion incorporated Saptari and Mahottari into a wider revenue state After the political unification of Nepal, the eastern Tarai became important not only for grain but also for cash revenue. Mahesh Chandra Regmi’s reconstruction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries shows Saptari and Mahottari repeatedly appearing in revenue orders, contracts and fiscal experiments. Their proximity to the Gangetic market world gave the state access to cultivators, merchants and revenue contractors from both sides of the later international boundary. Integration into the Gorkha state thus did not sever older north–south economic connections; it placed them inside a new fiscal hierarchy centred on Kathmandu. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 67.4 Raikar was the principal taxable framework, not a synonym for peasant ownership in the modern sense Raikar land was land on which revenue was due to the state and entered in its fiscal records. Over time registered holders acquired stronger transferable and inheritable claims, but the historical meaning of raikar changed with survey, registration and legislation. It is misleading either to call all raikar “state-owned” in a modern public-property sense or to project twentieth-century freehold concepts backward. For cultivators, the practical question was who was registered, who paid the assessment, who could transfer a holding, and whether another person stood between the cultivator and the revenue office. These answers varied by period and locality. 67.5 Birta redirected state revenue and sometimes strengthened private landed power Birta grants transferred land, revenue or fiscal privileges to individuals and institutions under varying conditions. Some grants approached private ownership; others primarily assigned the revenue that the state would otherwise have collected. In the Tarai, birta could create an absentee beneficiary whose income ultimately depended on cultivators. The social effect therefore depended on the class of grant, the rights of registered landholders beneath it and the rents or extractions actually imposed. Regmi’s work is especially valuable because it shows that “birta” was not one uniform estate type. The 1959 abolition legislation would later have to confront precisely this diversity. 67.6 Jagir and guthi linked land revenue to service and religious institutions Jagir assigned land revenue or land income in lieu of salaries and official service, while guthi endowed religious, charitable and social functions. Both demonstrate why land cannot be read only through the category of private ownership. Revenue from Tarai land could support soldiers, administrators, temples or ritual institutions far from the village that produced it. These assignments created claims on agrarian surplus without necessarily giving the beneficiary the same bundle of property rights as a modern owner. They also connected village production to state service and sacred institutions, making agrarian history part of administrative and religious history. Figure 264 — Land rights and fiscal channels in the Nepal Tarai 689689 GAJENDRA THAKUR 67.7 Ijara revenue farming could place district collections in the hands of contractors Early nineteenth-century records show Saptari and Mahottari revenue being assigned through ijara arrangements, under which contractors undertook to deliver an agreed sum to the government and collected revenue within the contracted area. The Hodgson papers preserve summaries of Tarai revenue contracts from the 1830s and 1840s, while Regmi documents still earlier examples. Revenue farming gave the state predictable receipts but created incentives for contractors to maximise collections. It was not identical with permanent proprietary landlordism: the contract concerned fiscal collection for a term, even though successful contractors could acquire substantial local power and wealth. 67.8 The 1793 Saptari–Mahottari order linked reclamation to graduated assessment A royal order of 1793, reconstructed by Regmi, classified cultivable forest and scrub in Saptari and Mahottari by quality and offered a staged tax schedule during reclamation. Newly opened land was initially assessed lightly, with the burden rising as cultivation became established; after the stipulated period, measurement and more regular crop-based assessment followed. The policy reveals a state actively trying to turn frontier land into taxable agriculture. It also shows that “waste” was an administrative category: forests and scrub might already support grazing, gathering or shifting uses even when officials regarded them as land awaiting settled cultivation. 67.9 Land grades translated ecological variation into fiscal categories Tarai assessment commonly distinguished grades such as abal, doyam, sim and chahar, terms that ranked land by productivity and situation. Such categories were practical tools for taxation, but they also created incentives for dispute over classification. Water access, soil, flood risk and cropping possibilities could change, while an official grade tended to stabilise a fiscal expectation. Revenue administration therefore converted complex environmental qualities into standardized categories. Historians should use the grades as evidence of state assessment, not as timeless agronomic facts applicable to every locality bearing the same label. 67.10 Agricultural expansion depended on settlers as well as official orders No reclamation policy could succeed without households willing to clear, drain, plough and remain on the land. Nepal’s rulers encouraged settlement from existing Tarai communities, the hills and adjoining districts of India at different moments. The open economic geography of the plains made such recruitment possible. Migrants did not enter empty land: indigenous and long-settled communities already held fields, forests and village institutions. Expansion could therefore create new cultivation while also redistributing power over older common resources. The history of settlement must include both state incentives and the local social costs of frontier-making. 67.11 Malaria and forest delayed dense settlement in some zones while protecting other land uses Before twentieth-century malaria control, disease risk shaped seasonal movement and discouraged many hill-origin households from permanent residence in parts of the Tarai. Forest also provided timber, fuel, grazing and hunting revenue. The state thus faced competing incentives: retain forest income or clear land for agriculture and land tax. In the eastern Tarai, where older settled tracts were extensive, the balance HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II differed from the inner Tarai and western forest zones. A regional history should therefore avoid presenting all Madhesh as one uniform frontier. Saptari–Mahottari agrarian systems developed through older cultivation as well as later reclamation. 67.12 Mouja-level jimidars became central to eastern Tarai administration in the nineteenth century By the early Rana period, and especially from the 1850s, the government increasingly relied on jimidars at the mouja or village level in the eastern Tarai. Their responsibilities included collecting land and related taxes, encouraging reclamation and settlement, maintaining local records and discharging specified police or administrative functions. They operated between cultivators and district revenue offices. The institution solved a practical problem for a state with limited village-level bureaucracy, but it also concentrated information, credit and coercive leverage in local hands. This combination made jimidars important figures in agrarian stratification. 67.13 Revenue collection and settlement promotion gave intermediaries opportunities to accumulate land Jimidars were not simply clerks. Regulations compensated them through commissions and, in some periods, assignments of jirayat land linked to the revenue under their jurisdiction. They were also positioned to know which holdings were vacant, in arrears or available for transfer. When they acted as lenders to cultivators, fiscal and credit power could reinforce one another. Regmi records legal efforts to limit encroachment on ordinary landholders, which itself suggests that expansion of intermediary holdings was a recurring concern. Formal office therefore helped create a landed elite even without granting proprietary title over every field in a village. 67.14 The 1861 eastern Tarai regulations formalised a revenue system built around local intermediaries Regulations promulgated in 1861 specified duties, emoluments and constraints for eastern Tarai revenue administration. They belong to the broader Rana attempt to increase predictable revenue after 1846 while promoting cultivation. Their importance lies less in a single rule than in institutionalisation: village intermediaries, records, land grades and district offices were tied together more systematically. The rules also help distinguish legal design from practice. Prohibitions against unauthorised appropriation did not guarantee that powerful functionaries refrained from it, just as formal obligations to assist settlement did not ensure that all cultivators received credit or protection. 691691 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 265 — Selected agrarian milestones in the eastern Tarai, 1793–1964 67.15 Nepal Tarai jimidari was not the Permanent Settlement zamindari of Bihar and Bengal The linguistic resemblance between jimidar or zamindar can mislead comparison. Under the Permanent Settlement in Bengal and Bihar, zamindars were recognised as proprietary landlords responsible for a fixed state revenue demand on estates. Regmi emphasizes that the Nepal Tarai government generally allotted taxable land to individual holders and used jimidars as revenue functionaries rather than granting them ownership of all land within their jurisdiction. Jimidars could become substantial landholders through jirayat, purchase, mortgage or influence, but their office itself was not equivalent to a permanently settled estate. Comparative history must preserve this legal difference. 67.16 Jirayat and commission payments converted public office into an economic resource A jimidar’s compensation could include a percentage of collections and cultivated or waste land assigned as jirayat. In the eastern Tarai, nineteenth-century rules linked the value of such assignments to the tax assessment under the jimidar’s jurisdiction. This arrangement rewarded effective collection but also blurred public and private interest. Increasing the cultivated area could enlarge the revenue base and the intermediary’s own resources at the same time. The resulting incentive structure helps explain why reclamation, migration and landlord formation proceeded together rather than as separate processes. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Figure 266 — Nepal Tarai jimidari and British Indian zamindari were not the same legal institution 67.17 Patwaris, registers and measurement made agrarian rights increasingly documentary Village and district revenue administration depended on records of holdings, assessment, payment and transfer. Patwaris and other record-keepers gave documentary form to rights that might also be grounded in occupation, inheritance and community recognition. Registration could strengthen a cultivator’s claim, but it could also privilege the person whose name entered the record over an unrecorded actual tiller. This tension became more important as land became saleable and mortgageable. Twentieth-century cadastral survey and reform would intensify the documentary character of ownership and tenancy rather than beginning it from nothing. 67.18 Actual cultivators occupied positions ranging from secure holders to tenants-at-will The category “peasant” conceals substantial differentiation. Some households held registered raikar land directly and paid state revenue; some cultivated under birta or other grants; some rented additional plots; others depended almost entirely on tenancy or wage labour. Security also varied. An occupancy relationship recognised by local custom could be stronger than a short-term lease but weaker than registered ownership. Agrarian society therefore contained smallholders, mixed owner-tenants, sharecroppers, labourers and landlords in changing proportions. Household strategies often combined several positions at once, especially where subdivision reduced the area inherited by each generation. 67.19 Rent could be fixed in cash, grain or a share of output Tenancy contracts in the Tarai included cash and produce rents as well as sharecropping arrangements such as adhiya. The form of rent allocated price and harvest risk differently between landholder and cultivator. A fixed cash rent could become onerous after crop failure, while share rent transferred part of production risk but allowed the landlord to claim a large portion of a good harvest. Legal ceilings on rent introduced in the 1950s and 1960s were attempts to regulate these relationships. Their existence shows that tenancy was not marginal to the agrarian economy; it was a central mechanism for matching concentrated land rights with households needing access to fields. 693693 GAJENDRA THAKUR 67.20 Debt connected tenancy to moneylending and land transfer Agricultural households needed credit for seed, cattle, food during the lean season, ceremonies and tax payments. Where formal rural credit was weak, landlords, merchants and revenue intermediaries could also act as lenders. Debt might be repaid from crops, labour or land. Mortgage and distress sale therefore became channels through which smallholders lost control of fields even when formal tenure rules protected ownership. This mechanism is crucial for understanding land concentration: not all inequality originated in royal grants or administrative privilege. Market dependence and household shocks could reproduce it from below. 67.21 Agrarian hierarchy intersected with caste, ethnicity and migration without being reducible to them Land distribution in the Tarai became entangled with social hierarchy. Privileged officials and grantees frequently came from groups close to state power, while cultivators included Madheshi caste communities, Dalits, Adivasi and indigenous groups, Muslims, hill migrants and settlers from adjoining India. Yet no single community occupied one invariant economic position across the plains. Some local elites accumulated land; some high-status families were smallholders; and landlessness cut across identities unevenly. The safest historical approach is to analyse who controlled land, labour, credit and office in each locality rather than infer class automatically from caste or ethnicity. 67.22 Women’s agrarian labour was more visible in production than in land records Women participated in transplanting, weeding, harvesting, livestock care, food processing and household reproduction, but land registration and official agrarian records overwhelmingly privileged male household heads. Inheritance rules, marriage residence and unequal access to documentation further limited women’s recorded ownership. A revenue archive can therefore give the false impression that agriculture was primarily a male activity. The gap between labour contribution and titled control matters for tenancy as well: women in land-poor households often bore the work and food-security consequences of insecure contracts without appearing as the contracting tenant. 67.23 The India–Nepal border made land a cross-border economic resource The Tarai’s agrarian economy was linked to north Bihar through labour, cattle, seed, grain markets, credit and kinship. Families could cultivate or own plots near the border while maintaining commercial and social relations on the other side. This connectivity helped settlement and market integration but complicated state efforts to define taxable subjects and alien landholders. Restrictions on land purchase by foreigners changed over time, and enforcement varied. Cross-border movement should therefore be treated as a structural feature of Madhesh agrarian history, not as an exception produced only by the modern open-border regime. 67.24 Irrigation and drainage changed the value of land as much as legal status did Paddy cultivation depended on reliable water control. Canals, embankments, ponds and local channels could raise yields and convert a marginal plot into valuable rice land, while flood or river migration could reverse that gain. Investment in irrigation was therefore inseparable from tenure security: tenants with short or uncertain contracts had weaker incentives to finance long-lived improvements, while landlords might underinvest if rent extraction did not depend on productivity. This relationship between property rights and HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II water management remains important in modern Tarai research and helps explain why agrarian reform cannot be assessed only by counting redistributed hectares. 67.25 Rana-era landlordism combined old grants, new offices and expanding markets Between 1846 and 1951 the Rana state strengthened elite access to land through birta, jagir and other assignments while also expanding revenue administration and reclamation. In the Tarai, rising market opportunities in grain, timber and later commercial crops increased the value of land. Absentee ownership became significant because officials and elites could draw rent from plains holdings while residing elsewhere. Yet local intermediaries and cultivators remained indispensable to actual production. The result was a layered agrarian order: central elites, district officials, jimidars, village notables, moneylenders, registered landholders, tenants and labourers were linked through overlapping claims on the same agricultural surplus. 67.26 Agrarian reform began before 1964 and should be read as a sequence Political change after 1951 produced repeated attempts to regulate unequal land relations. A Land Reform Commission was appointed in 1952. Measures in the 1950s sought to limit rents, protect tenants, curb extra levies and weaken privileged tenure. The 1959 Birta Abolition Act was especially important because it attacked a major intermediary grant system, though its treatment of different classes of birta was not identical. Reform was therefore not one sudden act in 1964. It was a decade-long struggle over who would be recognised as owner, tenant and revenue payer after the fall of the Rana regime. 67.27 The 1959 Birta Abolition Act ended a privileged tenure but did not automatically equalise landholding Birta abolition transferred or converted rights according to the legal class of the grant and brought formerly privileged land into the ordinary revenue framework. The measure weakened a historic basis of tax- free or revenue-assigned landed power, but it did not by itself guarantee land to the person actually cultivating every plot. Registered holders, birta beneficiaries and tenants could possess different claims. Contemporary debate therefore centred on whether reform should simply tax former birta land or transfer ownership downward. The legislation mixed approaches, illustrating the political difficulty of converting a layered tenure system into a single ownership register. 67.28 Survey and measurement made the coming land reform administratively possible The Survey and Measurement legislation of the early 1960s provided for cadastral mapping and more systematic land records. Land reform required precisely this infrastructure: ceilings could not be enforced unless the state could identify holdings, while tenancy protection depended on knowing who actually cultivated land. Survey was therefore a political technology as well as a technical one. It could expose large holdings, but it could also exclude people whose occupancy was not recorded at the decisive moment. The later prevalence of informal tenancy reflects in part this tension between lived cultivation and documentary recognition. 695695 GAJENDRA THAKUR 67.29 The 1964 Lands Act imposed ceilings and formalised tenancy, but implementation reshaped its effects At commencement, the 1964 Lands Act allowed a landowner family in the Tarai and inner Tarai up to twenty-five bighas of agricultural land plus three bighas for homestead purposes, while a tenant family could cultivate up to four bighas as tenant. Later amendments reduced the owner ceilings, so current statutory numbers must not be projected backward. The Act also sought tenant registration, rent regulation and acquisition of surplus land. Redistribution was limited, but recent research using Dhanusha records argues that the reform still weakened large-landlord authority and encouraged longer-term divestment toward middle peasants. Formal “failure” therefore did not mean historical insignificance. Figure 267 — Original 1964 Lands Act ceilings for the Tarai 67.30 Conclusion: Tarai agrarian society was produced by state-making, ecology and unequal access to documentation The Nepal Tarai’s agrarian structure cannot be explained by a timeless feudal label or by copying the Bengal zamindari model. It emerged through a specific history of taxable raikar, grants such as birta and jagir, guthi endowments, ijara revenue farming, mouja reclamation, jimidar intermediaries, tenancy, debt and migration. Ecological conditions determined where cultivation could expand; records determined whose claims the state recognised; markets changed the value of land; and reform altered the political meaning of landlordship without erasing inequality. In Madhesh, land history is therefore simultaneously environmental history, fiscal history, class history and the history of the modern state. Table 67.1 — Evidence domains for reconstructing land, tenancy and agrarian society in the Nepal Tarai Evidence domain What it can establish Principal limitation Royal orders and revenue dated tax rates, reclamation state prescriptions do not prove regulations rules, ijara contracts, jimidar uniform implementation in duties and official land grades every village Land registers, cadastral registered holders, parcel registration may omit actual surveys and transfer boundaries, assessment, cultivators, women and records documented transfers and informal tenants tenancy claims Tenure and grant records raikar, birta, jagir, guthi and the same tenure label could other legal-fiscal relationships contain different bundles of rights by period and grant class HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Evidence domain What it can establish Principal limitation Household, oral and local tenancy practice, debt, eviction, memory is retrospective and agrarian histories labour relations and the social locality-specific; it requires meaning of reform triangulation Statutes and reform rules formal ceilings, tenancy rights, law on the books does not abolition measures and establish enforcement or administrative procedure distributional outcome Agricultural censuses and holding-size distributions, categories and coverage change; land statistics registered tenancy and long- informal tenancy can remain term structural change invisible 697697