The article discusses the privileged ownership of land and its control over agriculture, popularly known as the mirasi system in Tamil Nadu, and the metamorphosis it underwent in the course of the nineteenth century. The full implications of the un-folding of the mirasi question and the significant changes that it experienced still remain to be comprehended.
The article begins with Lionel Place’s explanation of the mirasi rights, historically specific to Chingleput district in the late eighteenth century, and Francis Ellis’s more elaborate note on the mirasi rights in the early nineteenth century. The various forms of agricultural control produced complex agricultural relations. Consequently, the article argues that even the protest of the ‘privileged’ in the agrarian context might have diverse meanings. Lastly, mirasi question is addressed with a burning social question—the Paraiyan issue in connection with the distribution of the ‘waste’, which was admittedly a long contested right of the mirasidars. A debate between the reformist and conservative officials developed in the late nineteenth century Tamil Nadu, especially the links between the institution of mirasi landownership and the Paraiyan landlessness. Agrarian change and social mobility seem to have taken considerable, probably more complex part in the development.
Beyley, Papers on Mirasi Right: Selected from the Records of Government and published by Permission,
Madras
, 1862.
2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
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7.
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8.
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9.
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10.
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11.
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12.
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13.
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14.
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15.
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16.
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. ‘Personal Note’, Miscellaneous Volume of the Board of Revenue on Land Tenure, No 233, Appendix (‘final remark’).
19.
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20.
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21.
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22.
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23.
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24.
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Madras
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25.
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