Imran Ali, the Punjab Under Imperialism 1885-1947 First pub. 1988. This ed. (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 264. Price. Rs. 325)---.
Few dissertations become landmarks in the world of scholarship. Imran Ali’s undergraduate, and then doctoral, dissertation on the canal colonies of the Punjab happens to be one of them. It has been in circulation as a book since 1988 when it was published by the Princeton University Press but it was difficult to find. Now that the Oxford University Press has published it in Pakistan it is both cheaper and easily available.
Imran Ali’s study is about the agricultural colonization of the Punjab during British rule. The Punjab was an arid land despite its rivers. It became an area of settled and dependent agriculture when the British created an extensive network of canals. The canal-irrigated lands were settled by agricultural entrepreneurs and these were called the canal colonies. The focus of the book is on these canal colonies.
After a brief historical background the author gives details about the establishment of eight canal colonies (chapter 2). These are the Sidhnai, Sohag Para, Chunian, Chenab, Jhelum, Lower Bari Doab, Upper Chenab, Upper Jhelum and Nili Bar canal colonies. They were established between 1886 to 1926 at tremendous cost. The purpose was to create a sense of community in the Punjab; give people a stake in law and order and the stability of British rule; create a class of agricultural entrepreneurs entirely beholden to the British for their wealth and social status; increase agricultural productivity and facilitate the army by ensuring a supply of horses and camels and giving land to retired civil and military officials.
These objectives sometimes clashed with one another. For instance, in order to win over people with political and military importance, land was given to people who preferred to be absentee landlords. Moreover, a lot of the land was given to the army at extremely consessional rates which caused loss of revenue to the state. In short, political factors were given more importance than any other by the central government even when the Punjab Government protested against the violation of agricultural principles. Chapter 3, entitled ‘Entrenchment’ gives details about the creation of the Punjab agricultural classes in the canal colonies and how the grantees were not always chosen for their agricultural credentials.
Chapter 4, ‘Militarization’, gives details about how the army got lands as horse runs. The idea was to make cavalry regiments self-sufficient but, in fact, the regiments still drew money from the defence budget while becoming landlords in the Punjab. Moreover, civilians were given land in order to maintain and supply horses to the army. These grants were called ‘ghari pal murabbas’ (estates for the breeding of horses). In addition to that there were camel grants where camel-owning tribes were given land to breed camels for transportation for the army. Among other things, Imran Ali points out that army grantees, whether regiments or individuals, were much more aggressive than civilians. They agitated far more than other grantees and secured advantages. Moreover, they were ‘poor revenue payers’. Indeed, as the author says:
Jhelum Colony served as an unambiguous statement of the diversion of economic resources away from the public weal, undertaken to fulfil military needs. This resulted throughout in the lowering of profits from this colony (p. 168).
However, the canal colonies were otherwise profitable as chapter 5 (‘Extraction’) tells us. The profit, after excluding all charges, was close to Rs 1,000 million. In 1945-46 the accumulated surplus revenue was 415 percent of total capital outlay. This, however, was much less than it could have been had the agricultural methods been more efficient and, of course, if the land had not been given to political grantees and the army made to follow the usual regulations for increasing agricultural revenue.
The last chapter, on ‘Production’, concentrates on the impact of canal colonies on agricultural production. It looks at the various kinds of products---seeds, trees, cattle etc---the canal colonies produced. New crop varieties were improvised and new ways of generating electricity and watering land were tried out. In short, the state did succeed in agricultural and economic engineering on a grand scale in the Punjab. However, since the land grantees were generally from landholding classes, this economic engineering further consolidated the hold of the dominant classes. Moreover, those who served the establishment---the military and the bureaucracy---were also made powerful. Imran Ali just hints upon the social and political consequence of this. In the last chapter of the book he says:
Can the lineages of authoritarianism in Pakistan be traced to a ruling triad of landlords, bureaucracy, and military; and are these so prominent because of their propitiation in the canal colonies? (p. 242).
He raises this question without attempting to answer it. In the light of the issue of the change of rules to the disadvantage of the peasants at the military farms at Okara, this is a question which is much more urgent today than it was in 1988 when the book was first published. However, it would require another book to answer it.
The book is very competently researched. The author has made use of the immense material at the India Office Library and other archives so that the book, and notably its footnotes, remain a mine of much valuable information about the Punjab’s society, economy and the way the British ruled India. On the whole this is one of the most valuable works done by a Pakistani research scholar. It should remain a classic in its own field for a long time to come.