Social Structure and Process in Char Land Settlement in the Brahmaputra-Jamuna Floodplain

Abstract

This article offers a socio-economic and political analysis of accretion land (char) settlement in Bangladesh. Specifically, it discusses the nrse, in the floodplain, of the system of relations between landlords and peasants known as lathiyali, which became an important politico-economic structure in land colonization during the zainindary period (1793-1950) in Bengal. It also provides a detailed account of the rivalry of powerful landlords in contemporary Bangladesh who exploit their dependent peasants as lathiyals to grab new char land. By demonstrating interconnexions between the rural landlords and political power at the state level, the article develops a critique of approaches which explain such local deployment of violence and power in terms of isolation, marginality and weak state systems. In this article I exainine the development of the lathiyali1 political system in the context of char (accretion) land settlement in floodplain Bangladesh. The lathiyali is a semi-feudal system of relations between landlords and peasants in which the local talukdars (independent proprietors) and jotedars (superior tenure holders),2 acting as power bosses, use their patron-tied dependants as lathiyals to organize violent land conflict to grab new depositional land. This lathiyali system has long been regarded by the local administration as a 'law and order problem' and remains to date a largely unstudied and partially covert feature of Bangladeshi rural society and culture. My primary objective here is to describe and explain the social origins and the structure ofthe lathiyali system and the political role of lathiyals in mobilizing regional disputes. Briefly, I will try to show how talukdars, as local 'power-holders' in contemporary rural Bangladesh, take advantage of the unstable riverine situation by maintaining 'invisible' armies of lathiyals in order, first, to extract the surplus or use the cheap labour of dependent peasant households to expand their new agricultural frontier, and secondly, to secure further control over new char land. In addition, with lathiyals behind them, the talukdars can also significantly influence outcomes in formal political arenas. There are many studies, by anthropologists and other social scientists, of systems of patronage.3 Barth's (1959) early study of the acephalous political organization of a valley in Swat, Pakistan, is a classic work that deals with the dynamics of alliance and violent conflict over land between political factions based on patronclient relationships that cut across the class division between landlords and landless peasants. Barth analyzed these relationships using what is now commonly known