Modern Acts, Conservation of Fish and Colonial Interest: Inland Fisheries in Mid-Ganga Diara Ecology, India Vipul Singh & S. K. Gupta Department of History, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, vipulsingh.du@gmail.com Abstract Early modern regimes in India did not impose any tax on fisheries. After getting the grant of diwani or land revenue rights in 1765 the British East India Company tried to re-define all traditional rights through modern Acts and Legislations. It gradually established state control over rivers, lakes and ponds, and thus transformed the pre-colonial way of surviving the adverse ecological setting. State control over water meant control over access to river water. This considerably changed the pre- colonial relationship between the river-dependent communities of fishermen and fisheries. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, many colonial reports recommended that fisheries might prove a valuable source of revenue for the state. It was after this that the British government passed two inland fisheries acts. For a large fishing community living in vulnerable diara landmass the modern acts became all the more distressing. This paper attempts to understand these acts in the light of European notion of fisheries conservation and colonial interest to control water regime. 1. Introduction The history of control over natural resources in India is very old. From the very beginning in sixth century BCE, the states depended on the amount of control they were able to obligate on resources. To maintain its own standing army any state would look for newer avenues of earnings. In fact, the origin of land revenue as a major source of income could be traced to the requirements of the expanding states. The ruler as the head of state began to be accepted as having certain rights over land, and therefore, land revenue remained the fulcrum of state society until the time the British ruled as colonial power. Although many medieval and early modern states made effort to dig canals, tanks, ponds and wells for the local communities, control over the resources from water bodies such as inland fisheries was rarely intended to be part of state income. The state did not assign much importance to revenue from the fishing business as it was scattered, and therefore, imperceptible. Land revenue happened to be the main source for all ruling authorities until the mid-eighteenth century, when the trading companies such as the East India Company emerged as rulers of Bihar, Bengal and Orissa provinces. The colonial rule in India under aegis of the British crown brought with it many European concepts that included modern acts of taxing inland fisheries. The government redefined many long existing traditional rights of the communities and revenue rights of the state. Unlike the medieval rulers, the colonial administration looked at the rivers and water bodies as an important resource. The status of fisheries changed drastically because the In: A.M. Song, S.D. Bower, P. Onyango, S.J. Cooke, R. Chuenpagdee (Eds.), Inter-Sectoral Governance of Inland Fisheries (pp. xx-xx). TBTI Publication Series, St John's, NL, Canada.