Case: Pollisetti Pullamma And Ors Vs. Kalluri Rameswaramma And Ors


Decision reasoning: 1[ds]48. We have also considered the question of practice and presumptions if any in this regard. By Madras Act VIII of 1865 it was enacted that inamdars and other landholders should enter into written agreements with their tenants, the engagements of the landowners being termed pattas and those of tenants being termed Muchlika. The patta should contain, amongst other things, "all other special terms by which, it is intended the parties shall be bound. The muchlika should at the option of the landholders, be counterpart of the patta, or a simple engagement to hold according to the terms of the patta. In the instant Case the pattas and the muchlikas are not claimed to have shown anything to establish the lands to be private lands. Only the facts of occasional change of tenants and rents have been shown.49. The Privy Council in Suryanarayana v.Patanna, 1918 (41) ILR(Mad) 1012 : 1918 AIR(PC) 169 ), where the decision of the appeal mainly depended on the question whether the Agraharam Village of Korragun-tapalem in the Northern Circars of then Presidency of Madras was an estate, observed that the "term kudivaram is not defined in the Act. It is a Tamil word, and literally signifies a cultivators share in the produce of the land held by him as distinguished from the landlords share in the produce of the land received by him as the rent. The landlords .share is sometimes designated melvaram".50. The Privy Council held that there was no. presumption of law to the effect that in the case of an inamdar it should be presumed, in the absence of inam grant under which he held, that the grant was of the royal share of the revenue only. "In their Lordships" opinion there is no. such presumption of law. But a grant of a village by or on behalf of the Crown under the British rule is in law to be presumed to be subject to such rights of occupancy, if any, as the cultivators at the time of grant may have had". As against the above, we now have the statutory presumptions in Section 185(3) of the Estates Land Act, namely, "that the land shall be presumed not to be private land until the contrary is proved", and in case of estate within the meaning of sub-clause (d) of clause (2) the second proviso (i) and (ii).51. This evolution of the land revenue system concerned is likely to remind one of what Sir Henry Maine showed in his Ancient Law, "that in early times the only social brotherhood recognised was that of kinship, and that almost every form of social organisation, tribe, guild, and religious fraternity, was conceived under a similitude of it. Feudalism converted the village community based on a real or assumed consanguinity of its members, into the fief in which the relations of tenant and lord were those of contract, while those of the unfree tenant rested on status". It also reminds one what was said in the context of rights over land. "This earth", says Jagannatha, "is the cow which grants every wish., she affords property of a hundred various kinds (inferior if the owner need the assent of another proprietor- superior, if his right precede assent); while she deludes hundred owners, like a deceiving harlot, with the illusion of false enjoyment; for, in truth, there is no. other lord of this earth but one, the Supreme Lord".