Social and Economic Change in Haryana

The present book Social and Economic Change in Haryana is a pioneering research work, based on the archival source material, both of primary and secondary nature, collected, compiled and analysed by the author for almost a decade’s meticulous efforts to produce the first volume of the series to reveal the societal changes that occurred during the colonial state in the 19th century in Haryana which was then termed as the south-east Punjab. The book gives an interesting and vivid description of various social and economic aspects of the society of this region at the advent of the British in 1803. It enlists some of the important factors of social and economic changes in the process of degeneration and regeneration due to imposition of the alien colonial rule. The agencies of change became operative in this region to remould and reshape the facets of societal order of the day in gradual process. It was the British imperial state that affected changes in Haryana, as in other parts of the country, only to meet their commercial and imperial goals, designed to exploit the resources the most. The British exploitation exposed the pseudobenevolent mask of the British rule here. The data and figures carried in this book testify to a great extent this phenomenon of the colonial rule. The most attracting part of the book is the revelation of the supremacy of the Haryana farmers over the technological advancement of the British when the latter’s agricultural implements and products were rejected by the farmers, who adopted those which proved beneficial to them in the rural sector, Equipped with ingenuinity and ancestoral inherited experiences and experiments, the Haryana farmer could outsmart anyone in the field of agricultural production. However, the British were successful in utilizing the services of the local Hakims, indigenous medical practitioners, to promote their interests here. The British revenues policy proves fatal to both agriculture and cottage industries in the rural sector to the extent of compelling them to part with the land, Dharti Ma, to the moneylending class to pay the revenue dues to the British. It created tension in the society leading toe change in their relationship too, to be tackled later by way of the Punjab Land Alienation Act, 1901. This book has ventures to explode many myths, the British created and the later historians also followed. The book is an endeveaour to put the things straight for the perusal of the young scholars of history and also those who are interested in the study of the British period and also the state of Haryana.