[1][2] The advent of British rule in India had led to a trend whereby ownership rights to land were increasingly concentrated in the hands of urban moneylenders and other commercial communities.
They were assigned the property previously held by poor peasants, who either sold or mortgaged for the short-term benefit derived from the increasing values of land caused by improved agricultural methods, irrigation and communications.
Such transfers were enforceable under law but, in British eyes, potentially damaging to their colonial administration because they might ultimately result in a disaffected rural peasant population.
More, with the majority of those classified as agriculturists being Muslim,[4] the educated elite saw it as being anti-Hindu, just as their diminishing ability to gain government employment, which was once their preserve, was considered to be such.
[3][b] Rivaz's proposed legislation reignited the interest of elite Hindu Punjabis in the Congress and Indian Association political movements, which had waned during the decade.