Reading a Canal Colony Allotment Register
A Class 12 student is writing an essay on colonial canal colonies using a photocopy of a land allotment register from a colony in Lyallpur district, dated 1905. It lists 60 allotments: 38 to 'Jat Sikh', 12 to 'Muhammadan Jat', 6 to 'Khatri', and 4 to 'Brahmin'. Every allottee's 'previous district' is given as Amritsar, Jullundur, or Hoshiarpur. The register has columns for plot size and 'class of allotment', but the photocopy has cut off the right-hand side of the page where those columns lie. The student writes: 'The British deliberately favoured Jat Sikhs, who received nearly two-thirds of the land.' The teacher returns the draft with the comment that the register proves less than the student thinks.
1. Identify the weaknesses in the student's inference.
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There are four weaknesses. First, no denominator: 60 allottees are a selected group, not a sample of the population or even of applicants, so 'nearly two-thirds' describes this file, not the colony's land. Second, the categories are administrative: 'Jat Sikh' is a colonial census and revenue label applied by a clerk, and it lumps together groups that may not have used the term for themselves. Third, policy context: canal colony land was allotted under rules that restricted eligibility to certain 'agricultural tribes' and to applicants with capital or ploughs, so the pattern may reflect eligibility and selection rather than communal favouritism.
Fourth, the missing columns matter. Plot size and 'class of allotment' were cut off, and 38 small plots may hold less land than 12 large ones. The student has counted bodies, not acres.
2. What comparison would test the claim?
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The claim needs a baseline. Compare the register with (a) the colony's published allotment rules or notification, which state who was eligible and in what order; (b) the applicant or waiting list, if it survives, which shows whether one community applied more or was selected more; (c) census proportions for the source districts of Amritsar, Jullundur, and Hoshiarpur, to see whether 38 out of 60 is unusual relative to population; and (d) the plot-size and class columns, to compare acres rather than persons.
If Jat Sikhs formed a large share of eligible applicants from those districts, the register is unremarkable. If they were selected at a much higher rate than similarly eligible applicants, the claim becomes arguable. Without a baseline, 'favoured' is an assumption rather than a finding.
3. Rewrite the student's sentence.
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'In this 1905 register of 60 allotments in a Lyallpur canal colony, 38 allottees were recorded as Jat Sikh, 12 as Muhammadan Jat, 6 as Khatri, and 4 as Brahmin. Because allottees were chosen under the colony's eligibility rules and the register does not give the applicant pool or the plot sizes (those columns are cut off in this copy), the file cannot by itself show deliberate communal favouritism. It does show which administrative categories the colony used and which source districts it recruited from.'
The rewrite keeps the student's finding but changes the verb from 'favoured' to 'recorded', and it tells the reader what evidence would be needed to go further.