PRIVY COUNCIL

                The MidnapurZemindari Company Limited

                Vs.

                Uma CharanManlal and others, Defendants

                           P. C. A. No. 39 of 1922
(Lords Sumner Phillimore, J. Sir John Edge and Mr. Ameer Ali JJ.)

                8.6.1923

                JUDGMENT

Lord Sumner J.

1. Their Lordships do not desire to hear the respondents. The point arising for decision
on this appeal is a short one. In the group of suits, which the appellants brought in
India, the question which, for the purposes of to-day, was the material one to be
considered was this :- At what date is the under-tenure, of which they had become
purchasers at a sale under a decree for rent, to be taken to have originated ?

2. It was in connection with a prayer to have encumbrances cleared off that this
question arose, and according to the date fixed, earlier or later, they would be able to
clear off more encumbrances or fewer.

3. Now to ascertain the date, at which a particular holding first began to be held as a
definite holding, is essentially a question of fact, and must depend on evidence. That
evidence may be, and naturally is, documentary, but the documents admitted in
evidence upon that question are really historical materials, and although they have to
be construed, and if possible understood, they are not to be treated as involving issues
of law merely because they have to be construed. It is not as though they were being
construed as instruments of title, or were contracts or statutes, or otherwise the direct
foundation of rights.

4. The Subordinate Judge, who tried a number of these suits, came to the conclusion
that the date at which the under-tenure purchased by the plaintiffs had first arisen was
the 6th March, 1884. Some others were heard by the Munsif, who came to a contrary
conclusion. They were all consolidated and came before the District Judge, and the
finding of the District Judge affirmed that of the Sub ordinate Judge, not in every
respect upon the same grounds in detail, but substantially upon the same lines.

5. The case was then appealed to the High Court, When first it came before the High
Court, that tribunal contented itself with observing that the issues which are now
before their Lordships raised questions of some nicety, and pro ceeded to dispose of
the appeal upon a different ground, which need not be further enlarged upon. That
judgment of the High Court was brought before their Lordships and was reversed, and
so the case came to be remitted to India to be finally disposed of, and on the second
occasion the High Court dealt with the issues now in question, which they had
previously said little about, and briefly concurred in the view taken by the District
Judge.

6. Now if the question before the District Judge was one of fact, ad mittedly there is
an end of the matter. The District Judge, having to fix a date, fixed this particular date
as being the date at which a certain ruffinama or compromise was arrived at, under
circumstances which are not very clear, for no oral evidence was called, but which he
thought he could sufficiently infer from the contents of the ruffinama and from some
previous documents of earlier date. He came to the conclusion that there was at that
time a dispute, the gist of which was, whether the tenant was right in claiming that all
the land of which he was in possession was held on ghatwali tenure, or whether the
Zamindar was right in contending that but a small portion of that land was held on
ghatwali tenure and the rest was really mal land.

7. This is the dispute which was compromised in the ruffinama ; and the conclusion
which the District Judge, agreeing therein with the Subordinate Judge, arrived at was
that upon that occasion the parties solved this dispute by deciding that the amount of
ghatwali land was less than it was claimed to be ; and that, in addition to what was ad
mittedly mal land, some further land should be regarded as and held as mal laud, and
so the matter end ed. Thereupon, he held that it was from that date, and in
consequence of that compromise, that the present under-tenure relating to some of
these mal lands, of which the plaintiffs were the purchasers, came into existence as a
separate tenure.

8. There had been produced a series of documents, of earlier date, which it is not
necessary to go through - they are of varying characters, and it must be admitted that
they are scarcely luminous as to their purport.

9. It cannot really be suggested from these previous documents when the alleged
separate ghatwali tenure or the alleged separate mal tenure came into existence. As to
the latter, it is hypothetically said to begin about 1834, and as to the former, it is said
to have been in existence at least as early as 1799 ; but these documents are only
fragments, and by no means copious fragments, of a long chain of documents of
various kinds, which must have existed at one time or another, and they, like the
ruffina-ma, are documentary evidence of the point in dispute from which the District
Judge had to draw his own conclusions.

10. It is clear, therefore, that unless it can be shown that he has mis directed himself in
point of law in dealing with this question of fact upon this evidence, there is no ground
for appealing from his decision upon the question of fact, and from the judgment of
the High Court upon it. The suggestion is that it can be made to appear clearly from
the construction of the documents prior to the ruffinama, that the present tenure can be
dated earlier than the 6th March, 1884. That appears to their Lordships to be nothing
but a contention that a different conclusion of fact might have been drawn from those
documents.

11. The other way of putting the matter is to say that on the construction of the
ruffinama itself, it negatives the view taken that this under-tenure was first created at
that date. Their Lordships do not wish to be understood as agreeing with that view of
the contents of the ruffinama, but again the construction of it is merely the weighing of
a particular piece of evidence expressed in that particular form.

12. Their Lordships are unable to see that there has been any error in law on the part
of the District Judge and of the High Court, and that being so they neither desire nor
are entitled to criticise the merits or otherwise of the conclusion of fact.

13. The result being that this is a pure question of fact which has been determined in
India by tribunals whose judgment must be final, nothing remains but to dismiss these
appeals, with costs, and their Lordships will humbly advise His Majesty accordingly.

Appeal dismissed.