Myanmar Land tidbits

When I came across the claim that “The British did not gave full proprietorship title to land therefore they called the dues collected on land as Land Revenue instead of Land Tax” I wasn't satisfied. I though it must have been just a play of words. To me revenue sounded like referring to what the government got out of the taxation process, while tax is the burden that fall on taxpayers. Nevertheless, it was the conventional wisdom among fellow officers, based on that assertion, that land ownership recognized by the British Government had been some form of inferior ownership. It was some twenty-five years since I had left that government agency, yet some of the papers written by my younger friends in recent times still carried that assertion, without scrutiny, as truth.

I thought I found this assertion in a booklet or a report by some high official of the Land Nationalization Department while I was a government employee. I am not sure, though. Looking back, I wonder if it carries the overtones of the ruling BSPP (Burmese Socialist Programme Party). Too bad I didn't discuss the merit of this assertion with my seniors. Anyway, most of us would have been wise enough those days not to be inquisitive.

By luck I happened to call up one of my retired younger co-workers a few days ago and he was able to email me a scanned page of the source for that assertion. The following excerpt was from the booklet explaining the prevailing settlement procedures for fixing rates of land revenue with the sponsorship of the Revolutionary Government. The booklet was distributed by the Settlements and Land Records Department in 1966.

It reads:

“2. At the times of the British government, they did not give full possession of land (proprietorship) to the people. It was rather the right to hold land (Land Holder's Right). If it were proprietorship, the dues collectable on land has to be “Tax on Land”. If the people were treated only as tenants, the dues has to be called “Rent”. As the right on land given to people by the British government was not as good as proprietary, but still better than the mere rights of tenants, neither the term “Tax on Land” nor “Rent” was used and the compromise “Land Revenue” was coined. That was how land revenue came to exist.”

The concluding words of the excerpt seems to say that the the term Land Revenue originated in Myanmar, thanks to the ingenuity of the British administrators. However the British had used this term in India before us for the purpose of land taxation. This is from Full text of "Report Of The Land Revenue Commission Bengal Vol I".

14. ... All Governments in India have considered themselves entitled to a share of the produce, and 
this share of the produce, whether collected direct, or through farmers of revenue, or through 
subordinates or intermediate landlords, is called "land revenue".

On the other hand, the notion of Land Revenue as some halfway concept is easily disproved by this exceprt [The Land and Revenue Act (India Act II, 1876), in The Lower Burma Land Revenue Manual, 1945]:

Here we can see that instead of collecting land revenue for taungya-cultivation (slash and burn cultivation) “tax” will be collected. In this connection, we could easily see that tenure for the land used for taungya was hardly held with a full proprietorship, yet it was called “tax”.

As for whether Land Holder's Right is a proprietorship title would have been a deep and controversial topic. I guess it would have been hotly debated by Myanmar intellectuals and activists at least in the latter part of colonial rule and particularly after Myanmar's independence. Students of Myanmar land systems and historians would have something concrete to say on this topic.

Here, I am aware of the accounts in which Buddhist monks contested the King's confiscation of their religious lands in the Bagan period and won at the courts or tribunals. These episodes could be found in historian Dr Than Tun's Studies in Burmese History Number One, 1969 (pp. 164-166). They seem to signify that the King is not “The Lord paramount over, and the chief proprietor of, the soil” in Myanmar, at least in relation to religious lands.

A stronger judgment is from a younger generation of Myanmar historians. This is from Google Book entry on Thant Myint-U's “The making of modern Burma”:

I assume “A structure of genuinely private ownership, entirely free of gentry or aristocratic control or involvement” effectively means “allodial title”, may be with some restrictions.

In contrast, in page-148 of BSPP's publication “History of Myanmar Land, vol. 1” of 1970, it was stated that “right to ownership in land in reality was a mere right to hold land”.

While in page-85, it was stated that “Nevertheless, under the 1876 Land and Revenue Act, squatters who had worked their lands for 12 years without interruption are entitled to possess the land. So long as they pay land revenue regularly, government cannot evict them. Moreover, such an owner has the right to treat the land as his or her privately owned land and use it as he or she wishes.”

To me, these two statements look contradictory.