ABSTRACT
British Indian revenue policy determined British-tndian property law. It was essential to establish a class of landed proprietors, entitled by law to collect rents from their tenants, from which in turn government could legally assess its revenue demand. Revenue was principally settled with the zamindars, who had had rights to a share in agricultural produce which carried a duty to meet government's revenue demand recognised by the Mughal government. n the rural community, bewildering and archaic as it seemed to the Company's officials now beset with the problem of disentangling a mass of rights relating to land in order to redefine them, certain figures stood out as answering most closely to the description of 'proprietor': the zamindars. The provision made for the benevolent proprietor to safeguard and improve upon his and government's interests was however cruelly frustrated, by the very nature of the institutions the revenue laws had so carefully created.
