The Amil has taken the contract at the rate of last year, as the
Government had sanctioned no increase to the _nankar_, and he pleads
in vain for a remission in the rate, which he pledged himself to pay,
or an increase of means to enforce payment among so turbulent and
refractory a body of landholders. As I have before mentioned, the
Oude Government has this season issued an order to all revenue
collectors to refuse to recognise any increase to the _nankar_ that
has been made since the year A.D. 1814, or Fusilee 1222, when Saadut
Allee died, as none has since that year received the sanction of
Government, though the _nankar_ has been more than doubled within
that period in the manner above described by local authorities. The
increase to the _nankar_, and the alienation in rent-free tenure of
lands liable to assessment in 1814 by local authorities and
influential persons at Court, are supposed to amount in all Oude to
forty lacs of rupees a-year. None of them have been formally
recognised by the Court, but a great part of them has been tacitly
acquiesced in by the minister and Dewan for the time being. They
cannot enforce the order for reverting to the _nankar_ of 1814, and
if they attempt to do so the whole country will be in disorder.
Indeed, the minister knows his own weakness too well to think
seriously of ever making such an attempt. The _seer_ lands are those
which the landholders and their families till themselves, or by means
of their servants or hired cultivators.
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