John Locke, Accumulation by Dispossession and the Governance of Colonial India

This paper proposes a historical framework for examining colonial land policies in India. It argues that Locke's dualistic distinctions between settled agriculture on enclosed land and non-settled forms of livelihood framed basic differences in the ways that the colonial administration conceived of agricultural fields and forests. Locke's dichotomies between value and non-value-producing labour are also traced in early political economy, a discipline that exerted a direct influence on Indian governance, and particularly its land settlements. It is further argued that distinctions between value-producing labour and waste were formative in the development of the Forest Laws in the late nineteenth century, legislation that provided the legal framework for adivasi dispossession for the past century and a quarter.