48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 4. D.N. Dhanagare, 'Congress and Agrarian Agitation in Oudh', South Asia. 5, (1975), pp. 1-7. 5. Regarding peasant movement in Pratapgarh district of Awadh, G. Pandey observed: 'there was ... a great deal of volatility in the political protests of ... impoverished cultivators; and of course Congress leaders strongly disapproved of their proneness to violence. By the time of the Civil Disobedience Movement (of 1930s) the stronger position of the Congress enabled its leaders to extend the 'political cry' while ensuring at the same time that the agitation did not develop beyond their control into unruly and potentially violent demonstrations by unorganised groups and individuals'. [The Ascendency of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926-34, (New Delhi, 1978), p. 2051 6. George Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, (London, 1971), p. 257. 7. D.A. Washbrook, 'Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India', Modern Asian Studies, 15,3 (1981), pp. 249-250. 8. Oudh Rent-Act of 1886 remained in force till 1920 when major peasant uprising necessitated further modifications. Henceforth ORA, 1886. 9. This was a prominent area in the map of peasant rebellion during 1920s. 10. There were five grades of 'Revenue Courts' in Awadh: the Assistant Collector of the Second Class, the Assistant Collector of First Class, the Collector (Deputy Commissioner), the Commissioner, and the Board of Revenue. We were interested in locating the proceedings and decisions of Court Cases related to ORA, 1886. But in collection of cases there were problems. Firstly, the court proceedings after a certain period are destroyed. What was available was only decisions of the cases reported in various volumes of law reports. These came out to be mainly of the highest level i.e., the Board of Revenue. Secondly, in law reports from 1886 to 1909 there was no mention of districts of the divisions. This forced us to leave the cases upto 1909. Cases were collected from the following volumes of law reports: K.S. Hajela, C.S. Hussain, and A.C. Mukherjee (eds.). Revenue Decisions (Lucknow), Vol. II, III, IV and V; and V.N. Saxena, The Unpublished Decisions of the Board of Revenue (Allahabad), Part III, Vol. IV & Part V. There were 40 cases available but 10 cases, due to lack of information, have not been included in the present study. All the cases from Faizabad division, of which Pratapgarh was a district, have been analyzed separately in Vikash N. Pandey, Agrarian Legislation and Social Structure in Colonial Awadh: Changing Property Relations through a Study of Court Cases, Unpublished thesis (I.I.T. Kanpur, 1985), pp. 176-225. 11. It has put limitations of our study because these cases were only representative of conflicts among particularly well-off sections of agrarian order. But, at the same time, it is useful in two respects: (i) Being important cases (in view of legal findings and rulings over certain issues), they become indicators of major issues. (ii) Secondly, because these cases could have been fought amongst better-off sections of the people, we are able to make comments upon the very nature of legal framework, which favoured the privileged groups. 12. For details see I. Habib. The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556-1707 (Bombay, 1963). 13. J. Raj, The Mutiny and British Land Policy in North India, 1856-58 (Bombay, 1965) 14. For detailed account of policy objectives and historical evolution behind these legislations, see J. Raj, ibid and Economic Conflicts in North India: A Study of Landlord—Tenant Relations in Oudh, 1870-1890 (New Delhi, 1978).