Myanmar Land tidbits: The Making of the Land and Revenue Act, 1876

In “Housing, Land And Property Rights In Burma: The Current Legal Framework”, a compilation over twelve-hundred pages long and published in 2009 by the Displacement Solutions and The HLP Institute we are presented with a most comprehensive collection of HLP laws. Thanks to the generosity of the publishers anyone could get the entire book (Burma_HLP_book.pdf) in digital form here.

The Land and Revenue Act (India Act II, 1876) was the first major land law enacted on our land after the annexation of “Lower Burma”. Page 22 of the HLP_book says:

Through the adoption of progressive land and revenue laws the British created, for the first time, a legal arrangement recognising private ownership of land as well as a system of land revenue tax collection. Due to the separate annexation of Lower and Upper Burma42 separate legislation was passed to suit these different jurisdictions. The Land and Revenue Act (1879) was the first major land law enacted in Burma and governed the acquisition of land rights for private persons as well as the procedures for assessment and collection of land revenue taxes. Following this legislation, the Upper Burma Land and Revenue Regulation (1889) was adopted and applied similar principles of land ownership and land revenue tax collection.

But when I started reading the this Act on page-54, I didn't feel comfortable as reading its text in the “Lower Burma Land Revenue Manual” or other old law books that were standard references for us and other Government Agencies. Why would the opening sentence of this law on page-54 says “ … rights in land in the Union of Burma” or in paragraph-2 of part I of the act says “... The President of the Union may ...” while the title says “THE LAND AND REVENUE ACT; India Act II, 1876; 1 February 1879” without mentioning any amendments. May be it is their style and that was the flavor throughout this compilation.

On the lighter side, I would joke that this is reminiscent of the heydays of the press scrutiny office. We Myanmars have a way of writing one way and reading it another way and this reminds me of possibly being the handiwork of former press scrutiny people. Once I read a magazine article by our late Thu-Maung, a successful actor, singer, and writer. By chance my eyes were drawn to a phrase containing the words “myeik-kyar” (မြိတ်ကြား). Through its context, it clearly should be “phate-kyar” (ဖိတ်ကြား) as we write and pronounce, meaning “invite”. I was completely baffled. But then I realized that Thu-Maung must have spelled “beik-kyar” (ဘိတ်ကြား) as written sometimes, which would have been corrected by someone as “myeik-kyar” (မြိတ်ကြား) because Beik a city in Tanintharyi Division is written Myeik (မြိတ်)! Lest I angered the traditionally sensitive groups, I would need to add that the magazine editor or even the typist may have, in fact, been responsible for this slip.

To continue with my story, I have been fascinated like others in the real meaning and intention behind the laws. The language of the laws doesn't help the laymen much. But if you have behind the scene access like sitting through the parliamentary debates that would be really helpful. So when I chanced to read the debates that led to the Land and Revenue Act, 1876, despite my meager knowledge of law in general and Myanmar land laws in particular, it struck me as something close to a missing link for Myanmar Land Laws.

The debate I am mentioning was recounted in full in chapter-VIII (pages 85-154) of the “Burma Settlement Manual, Volume-I” by T C Wilson, The Commissioner of Settlements and Land Records. It was printed at the British Burma Press in Rangoon in 1908. Though I don't have enough knowledge to claim that the whole work is relatively unknown, I can say definitely that my fellow junior officers didn't know about it at all. As for my close seniors, I doubt if they were any better.

My first encounter with this work, I guess, was in the mid-eighties at the headquarters of the Settlements and Land Records Department in Yangon. Of the fond memories of those days, I remembered my seniors regarding me a hard-headed youngster (relatively) and an upstart of some sort, nevertheless tolerating my (relatively) radical ideas and leaving me alone to browse the contents of such old books, for example.

Well, as it happened, I was really impressed with this work, which I vaguely remembered as having picked it up either from our dusty library or from the Lower Burma Settlements Office. I introduced it to one of my seniors at our headquarter with much enthusiasm. Afterward there was no communication between us about this book so far as I can remember. Much later, after I've left my job, I asked my friends about this book and came to know that the book had been given away by my senior officer to someone at the BSPP (Burmese Socialist Programme Party) headquarter and it was the last thing I heard about it.

Fortunately, I few months ago I happened to mention this book to one of my younger retirees from the same government agency I had worked for. Then my friend recalled picking up some old books many years ago from a friend of his who was packing up to move his office to the new headquarters. Checking this collection out, my friend miraculously recovered another copy of the Settlement Manual by Mr. Wilson.

The following shows the scanned first and last pages of chapter-VIII of the book.

It seems too precious to keep contents of the book between my friend and myself, so for a start I've shared the entire chapter-VIII here in three parts:

TCW_LRA1876_pp85-107.pdf - available here

TCW_LRA1876_pp108-131.pdf - available here

TCW_LRA1876_pp132-154.pdf - available here