When the British took the Panjab in the 1840s their first act was to assess the land revenue and prepare registers of landholdings for every village. Registration was designed both to preserve local illustrations in a new legal mould and to provide Government with continually updated information about village society.

A dual regime was initiated; village records defined the idiom for official land transactions as well as forms of representation through field maps and genealogies; district reports defined the authorized version of knowledge about local conditions. What was designed to preserve was transformed; what was assumed to be flexible became rigid. Between local knowledge and knowledge about India there was no transparent relation. Rule by Records analyses the formation of this regime by focussing on the process of land registration in a locality of villages at the start of British rule.

The village records are treated like a window looking both outwards at society and inwards to the mentality of imperial rule.