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Class Formation and 'Antediluvian' Capital in Bangladesh*

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Class Formation and 'Antediluvian' Capital in Bangladesh* Class Formation and 'Antediluvian' Capital in Bangladesh* Geof Wood elites do not constitute a class, since the division of the holding between sons ensures a process of Published data on rural class differentiation in cyclical mobility, or, indeed, 'cyclical Kulakism' Bangladesh is underdevelopedand inhibits (Bertocci 1972.) Differenìiation in this perspective elaborate description. This is partly because most is analysed as stratification ('objective' categories of the research was conducted until recently by of wealth, income andstatusthrough which the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development actors move up and down) rather than with a at Comilla (Blair 1974: 122; Van Schondel 1976) focus on the social relations of production and and has been based on agro-economic surveys in exchange. thedenselypopulatedandfertileregionof Comilla itself. The Comilla findings formed the The leftist groups in Bangladesh (see Maniruz- basis of extrapolations for Bangladesh as a whole, zarnan 1975) analyse its class structure differently, providing an ¡mage of a homogenous agrarian but they are divided by fundamentally opposed structuredescribedintermsofsmall-holding positions. Some groups like the East Pakistan farmers. Thus anoverallconsideration of the Communist Party of East Bengal, describe social land distribution and tenure data on Bangladesh relations in the countryside as being feudal or in the 1960s threw up two misleading generalisa- semi-feudal.Inparticulartheyfocuson the tions: the absence of a substantial class of land- issuesofsharecroppingandbondedlabour, lords and landholders; and the lowlevelof pointing to the classes of landlords which remain absolute average size holding. From this data significant in the North and West regions of the itis usually concluded that "the rural economy country. Elsewhere, even in the densely populated of Bangladeshisbest described asa peasant Dacca-Comilla region(including Noakhali) economy based on small family farms operated sharecroppingisstill an important component primarily with family labour" (e.g. Abdullah and ofmanyofthesmallfarms.TheJatiyo Nations, 1974: 9; also Bose, 1973). The Comilla SamajtrantrikDal(JSD.theRevolutionary cooperative programme was predicatedortthe Socialist Party) on the other hand argues that the ideological assumption that class division within rural economy is becoming pervasively capitalist. the'peasant economy' was structurallyinsig- In particular it evaluated the impact of dominant nificant. capital from the Western wing of Pakistan (hence itstactical support for 'liberation'); emphasized More recently this view has been modified by thepolarisationoflandholdingwhichwas reognising a critical distinction between 'surplus' disguised by the aggregated nationalstatistics; peasants on the one hand and subsistence, below and demonstrated the way in which agricultural subsistence and landless on the other:i.e.,that programmes in Bangladesh (and, before 1971, in minor variations of landholding were nevertheless Pakistan)werebig-farmeroriented,especially critical(Abdullah and Nations1974;Bertocci when the Comilla strategy is extended into other, 1972).Inthisview,andalongwith many more differentiated, regions. subsequent evaluations of the Comilla coopera- tive strategy (Khan 1971), there are rural elites A refinement of the JSD positionisin order. in Bangladeshbut their existence is explained In the specific circumstances of the partition of largely in terms of traditionally strong lineages Bengal in 1947 and the colonial domination of hich have managed to dominate the coopera- East Bengal by West Pakistan with the related tives,newirrigationopportunities,fertiliser restrictions on Bengali capital accumulation, the distribution throughpoliticalconnections with formal destruction of the landlord-tenant system government officals. By such means rural elites did not bring about the development of capitalist have marginally extended their controt over land. relationsofproduction in thecountryside. However, there isthe related notion that these Instead other forms of capital were released- moneylending, trading,petty leasingwhich characterisedtherelationsbetweendifferent * This paperis based on a longer draft containing additional descriptive material and statistics and entitled 'The Nature classes of Muslims, after Hindu landlords and ofRural ClassDiff.rentiationinBangladesh', which was departed.Itisthroughthese presented tothe Peasant Seminar, Centre of International moneylenders and Area Studies, University of London in June, 1977. relationships thatthe polarisationof classesis 39 occurring, even under the 'minifundist' agrarian in the form of rent. This zamindar system was conditionsoftheDacca-Comillaregion. The formally abolished in 1950 by the East Bengal developmentoftheserelationspre-datesthe State Acquisition Act, although the partition of government strategies of intensifying the level of India in 1947 had already undermined some of capital in agricultural production,thereby its features. The pervasiveness of the system, and structuring the impact of these strategies away therefore its structural importance for the social fromthecreationofcapitalistproduction formation after 1950, is demonstrated by noting relations. Thus the process of class differentiation that in pre-partition East Bengal, out of a total in Bangladesh is the development of usurious and of 28.8 mn acres, approximately 18 mn acres exploitative relations in the sphere of exchange were held by raiyats and a further 2 mn held rather than in the sphere of production per se. directly by under-raiyats, i.e., approximately 70 per It is another question whether these relations are cent. a temporary phase of early accumulation destined totransform the social formationintonative Land Revenue Commission reports in the 1940s capitalism (Chattopadhyay 1972); or whether they reveal regional variations in the structure of rural are bound to persist and start the development social relations which undermine the assumptions ofcapitalistrelationsin Bangladesh (Patnaik of homogeneity based on national level averages 1972; Alavi 1975). which comprise the more recently published data on landholdings. They show that the districts in However, the development of these antediluvian theNorthandWestofEastBengalwere relations is not a uniform phenomenon distinguished from elsewhere in the province by throughout all the regions of Bangladesh, and it greater proportions of sharecroppers and landless, is the existence of significant regional variations and that the classes of ralyats and tenants were in the relations between classes which is perhaps more differentiated by size of landholding. In those responsible for the contradictory views of rural reports there are descriptions of Muslim jotedars classdifferentiation, noted above. In particular (petty landlords/rich raiyats). This lends weight the regions in the North and West of the country tothepropositionthattherewereMuslim are characterised by a greater differentiation in 'surplus' farmers before and during the emergence landholding, larger landlords, no sharecroppers of Pakistan in certaïn areas of East Bengal, as and higher landlessness. This pattern is associated againstthemorefamiliarnotionthatthese with both specific historical conditions and lower classes developed all over East Bengal solely as density of rural population than in the eastern a result of West Pakistan colonial policy or in regions of the country. Thus while a general response to the opportunities created by Comilla- pictureofantediluviancapitalprevails,the type agricultural development strategies. precise fornis of that capital and its effects vary- more petty leasing in the North and West, more An explanation for this regional variation in the usury and petty commodity exchange in the East. extent of differentiation among the raiyar classes must in part refer to the historical specificity of Under British rule the province of Bengal was a the'border'districtsduring the1940s. These 'PermanentlySettled'area, where most of the districts were more exposed to communal tension land was divided among za,nindarsa hereditary which developed as a preludetothe Muslim class of tax farmers and 'super landlords' taken League's campaign for a separate Islamic State. over by the British from the declining Mughal This communal factor restrained the excesses of empire during the eighteenth century. The culti- (Hindu)zamindaroppressionoverMuslim vator with permanent occupancy rights was a tenants (e.g., illegal charges in addition to statutory raiyat, and he in turn might rent out all or part rent), thus retaining more surplus at the level of ofhis land to under-raiyats or sharecroppers. raiyatfor accumulation and consolidationof Between the zwnindar and the raiyat, a class of holdings. Also, as the rural population in border intermediaries or tenure-holders proliferated as districtswas more evenlydistributedbetween zainindars sub-dividedtherent-collecting func- Hindus andMuslimsthanelsewhereinthe tions. Apart from the State,then, the classes province, the impact of inter-caste relations on variouslyconnectedwith the landwere: thepatternoflandholding andtenancy was zainindars,raiyats,under-raiyats,sharecroppers greater. And after 1947, the departure of Hindu and landless labourers. Sharecroppers and land- raiyals as well as zainindars and tenure holders less labourers were the main classes of labour on created more 'illegal' opportunities than further the land with raiyats occupying thestructural east for the
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