Contested Property and Communal Identity: The Impact of Evacuee Property Laws in UP (1947–1955)

Author(s)	Vishesh Kumar
Country	India
Abstract	This report examines the legal and socio-economic transformation of Uttar Pradesh (UP) between 1947 and 1955, driven by the Administration of Evacuee Property Act (1950). It focuses on the "intending evacuee" clause (Section 2e), which empowered the state to freeze the assets of Muslims based on the suspicion of future migration. The analysis explores how these laws intersected with the UP Zamindari Abolition Act (1950) to systematically dispossess the Muslim landed elite (Ashraf) in urban centers like Lucknow and Aligarh. The "Evacuee Pool" created from these seized assets became a critical tool for refugee rehabilitation, facilitating a state-led demographic and geographic reconfiguration of urban spaces. This process did not merely reallocate property but fundamentally altered communal identities, institutionalized state surveillance of minority homes, and created a "precarious citizenship" for the Muslim minority. The report concludes that the bureaucratic partition of property was as definitive as the physical partition of the subcontinent in shaping the post-colonial Indian state.
Field	Sociology > Archaeology / History
Published In	Volume 17, Issue 1, January-March 2026
Published On	2026-03-10

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