The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c11.t20.10

c11.t20.10

This does not, however, settle the question as to how far, if at all, the crown was the legal proprietor of land, i. e. how far the “village community” (wherever it may have existed) or the individual cultivator were but “tenants” of the state-landlord (paying “economic” rents for the usufruct of public property) and how far their dues were “direct taxes” paid on their own immovable possessions. It is the tendency of modern Indologists to postulate all lands as state property and the income from land necessarily as crown rent. But it is hardly possible to maintain this position on the strength of actual proprietary documents, *sâsanas* (laws or charters) and epigraphic records. For all practical purposes the presumption rather should be that Hindu India did not know of state-landlordism, i. e. land-nationalization⁴ except of course in very limited areas. The land revenue of Hindu states was therefore generally speaking, a tax. But, as Giffen⁵ explains away the distinction between rent and tax, “the fact of a government levying so general a charge may be held *ipso facto* to convert the charge into a tax having much the same economic effects and consequences as a tax". For in strict theory, "where the government makes a charge, it levies a tax". The features of monopoly and compulsion on the taxpayer associated with all forms of land-revenue "make the charges difficult to distinguish logically from other taxes".