ABSTRACT
Land questions were deeply political, in British minds, because of the debates of political economists, the enclosures and Luddites, the corn laws, the Irish question, and advocacy of land nationalisation. Ripon's interfering radicalism was intolerable to some precisely because it aped that of Gladstone; the supposed confiscation of property in Bengal produced an avid alliance of opponents in Britain partly because it was supposed to repeat a confiscation which had just occurred in Ireland. The Indian reformers' hands were tied, indeed, partly for fear of political upheavals in Britain. But land and politics had long been entwined in India too. In colonial times, land policies were particularly significant in determining the competing styles of Indian administration. The decisions of the 1880s were political because they represented a victory largely for officials of one persuasion, were achieved by political rather than bureaucratic means, and were about styles and purposes of government. They were political too because they reflected a choice of government allies, created potentially political constituencies and classes, and engendered habits of political action and debate in defence of such positions and interests. Put another way, each aspect in the rent law debate required political decisions—they were indicators of officials in ascendancy and styles of administration; they revealed preferred supporters and the interests of individuals and classes; they were about goals of government.
