A treasure trove of information

The British were wonderful at documenting and the colonial gazetteers contain information of great strategic importance

What is the oldest statute in India? Several old statutes have been repealed. Nevertheless, the oldest statute still dates back to 1836. Known as the Bengal Districts Act, the entire act has a single sentence. “Power to create new zilas —It shall be lawful for the State Government, by notification in the Official Gazette, to create new zilas in any part of West Bengal.” This is the text as it stands today, not as it was in 1836. There have been amendments in 1874, 1903, 1920, 1948 and 1950. If old statutes are being repealed, why does this statute still exist? This has to do with powers of the Union government and the state governments under Article 372(1) of the Constitution. If Bengal Districts Act is to be repealed, that will have to be done by West Bengal’s State Assembly, not Union Parliament. Perhaps such a statute is needed to create districts. Why else does Bangladesh still retain Bengal Districts Act? But I doubt this and think the more likely reason is inertia. States have sufficient powers under relevant land revenue legislation to create and define districts, sub-divisions of districts and even villages. Inertia results from the historical way land revenue legislation evolved in undivided Bengal. Since states can create districts, the number of districts varies and keeps increasing. The 2001 Census had 593 districts, 2011 Census had 640. The number is more than 700 now.

Some districts are developed, others deprived, defined by whatever indicator is used to measure development/deprivation. There is an Aspirational District programme now and a March 2018 baseline of 115 aspirational districts more “backward” than the rest. Such identifications are not new. In 2003, Laveesh Bhandari and I edited a book titled District-Level Deprivation in the New Millennium and got Shankkar Aiyar to author a paper on the history of such identification. Shankkar identified eleven committees (earliest 1960) that identified backward districts. Outside these committees, there were some ad hoc listings of backward districts too. While the lists varied a bit, there was a core list (a bit like HCF, highest common factor) of common districts that have remained backward and aspirational since Independence. When we think of inter-state disparities, this is often due to intra-state disparities within larger states. Larger states are typically more heterogeneous. Aspirational districts pull down, and have historically pulled down, larger states more than smaller ones. State boundaries were drawn for historical and administrative reasons. They don’t neatly follow the contours of development/deprivation. We need to look beyond states and at districts. Half the districts are above average. (Had I said half the districts are below average, people would have been upset.) To understand districts, district gazetteers are a wealth of information.

Illustration by Binay Sinha

“The gazetteers contain information of great strategic importance. Their great importance is clear from the fact that the Prime Minister of India in his speech in the Lok Sabha (April 28, 1965) quoted from different gazetteers to corroborate the fact that the Rann of Kutch was a part of India. So the gazetteers, whether it is district gazetteers, or state gazetteers or Indian gazetteers, are indeed of a national asset. It offers considerable scope for research. As aptly pointed out by the International Documentation Centre, Sweden, “The Indian gazetteers are as incomparable collection of research material and a necessary source of information for all studies concerning the history and culture of India.” The documentation centre of some foreign countries have spent a large sum of money on microfilming the entire series — old and new — of gazetteers is thus recognised even in foreign countries”. This quote is from the Raebareli district gazetteer website. I have always wondered why more use is not made of district gazetteers. They are a treasure trove of information. 

Some district gazetteers are old, others new. “Old” means gazetteers published during the colonial period, beginning in the 1870s and with supplementary volumes added till 1930s. “New” means post-Independence gazetteers. Some states (such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu) started publishing newer versions of gazetteers, even after Independence. This was important enough for preparation of gazetteers to become a national project in 1957. Therefore, all states should have published gazetteers and should have gazetteer departments. The former is generally true. The latter is not invariably true, since there are gazetteer units under some other department.  As most people agree, the British were wonderful at documenting and I personally think the quality of the old colonial gazetteers was better than that of the new.

I haven’t been able to get old gazetteers for all states. But I have got them for Karnataka, West Bengal, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Maharashtra and Punjab. I don’t think the set I possess is complete. But there is plenty of information there to get going in these columns. “It has been suggested that the Yamuna used to flow in the course of the old Sarasvati and was a tributary of the Ghaggar which was itself a mighty independent river system with its trunk stream occupying the bed of the Hakra (the ancient Sarsavati.). For reasons yet to be explained the Yamuna-Satluj divide received an uplift which caused the dismemberment of this river system, the Yamuna diverting to the east and the Satluj, which was also a tributary of the Ghaggar river system according to this view, to the west.” Those who track history are aware of this proposition. I find it interesting that this finds a mention in the Rohtak gazetteer of 1883-84.

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The author is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. 

Views are personal