Peasants, Zamindars and the State (Agrarian Society and Mughal Empire)

2.1 Core concepts

• During the 16th–17th centuries, about 85 per cent of India's population lived in villages; both peasants and landed elites claimed shares of agricultural produce, generating cooperation, competition and conflict (NCERT Intro, p. 196).
• The Mughal state derived the bulk of its income from agricultural production and deployed revenue assessors, collectors and record keepers to ensure cultivation and tax collection (NCERT Intro, p. 196).
• The chief source is the Ain-i Akbari authored by Abu'l Fazl, which recorded state arrangements for cultivation, revenue collection and zamindar regulation — but offers a "view from the top" (NCERT §1.1, p. 197).
• The Ain is supplemented by revenue records from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and East India Company records on eastern India (NCERT §1.1, p. 197).
• Indo-Persian sources called peasants raiyat / muzarian / kisan / asami; 17th-century sources distinguish khud-kashta (resident cultivators of the village) and pahi-kashta (non-resident contractual cultivators) (NCERT §1.2, p. 197–198).
• Average north Indian peasant possessed a pair of bullocks and two ploughs; in Gujarat six acres = affluent, in Bengal five acres = average and 10 acres = a rich asami; cultivation was based on individual ownership (NCERT §1.2, p. 198).
• Three factors drove agricultural expansion — abundance of land, available labour and mobility of peasants (NCERT §1.3, p. 198).
• Rice was grown in areas with 40+ inches of rainfall, followed by wheat and millets on a descending precipitation scale; monsoons were the backbone of Indian agriculture (NCERT §1.3, p. 198).
• Irrigation technology included the Persian wheel (rahat) described in Babur Nama — using two ropes with wooden strips, pitchers and a bullock-driven wheel mechanism at wells in Lahore and Dipalpur; in Agra, Chandwar and Bayana a bucket-and-roller system was used; state dug canals like the shahnahr in Punjab under Shah Jahan (NCERT §1.3, p. 199–200).
• A wooden plough with iron tip/coulter (light, shallow furrows, preserved moisture), a drill pulled by giant oxen for sowing, broadcasting of seed and a narrow iron-blade hoe for weeding were the main tools (NCERT §1.3, p. 200).
• Two seasonal cycles — kharif (autumn) and rabi (spring) — produced two crops a year (do-fasla), some three; Agra produced 39 varieties, Delhi 43, Bengal 50 varieties of rice alone (NCERT §1.4, p. 200).
• Jins-i kamil (literally "perfect crops") were cash crops the Mughal state encouraged for higher revenue — cotton (central India and Deccan) and sugarcane (Bengal) were the par excellence examples; also included oilseeds (mustard) and lentils (NCERT §1.4, p. 200).
• New crops arrived in the 17th century — maize via Africa and Spain, tomatoes, potatoes, chillies, pineapple and papaya from the New World; tobacco reached Akbar's nobles first in 1604, was banned by Jahangir but became a major article by the end of the 17th century (NCERT §1.4, p. 200–201; box on tobacco, p. 200).
• Population grew by about 50 million between 1600 and 1800 (~33 per cent over 200 years) (NCERT box, p. 200).
• The village community had three constituents — cultivators, panchayat, and village headman (muqaddam/mandal) (NCERT §2, p. 201).
• Caste-based inequities were deep — menial agricultural labourers (majur) were a large segment; halalkhoran (scavengers) lived outside villages in Muslim communities, and mallahzadas in Bihar were compared to slaves (NCERT §2.1, p. 201–202).
• Intermediate castes — Ahirs, Gujars, Malis — rose due to cattle-rearing and horticulture; Sadgops and Kaivartas in the east acquired peasant status (NCERT §2.1, p. 202).
• The panchayat was an oligarchy of village elders representing castes/communities; headed by a muqaddam/mandal chosen by consensus and ratified by the zamindar; the headman supervised village accounts with the patwari (accountant) (NCERT §2.2, p. 202).
• Panchayat funds came from contributions to a common pool; spent on entertaining revenue officials, calamity relief and constructing bunds/canals (NCERT §2.2, p. 202–203).
• Panchayats enforced caste boundaries (in eastern India all marriages were held before the mandal), levied fines and could expel offenders from the community; each caste/jati also had its own jati panchayat that arbitrated civil disputes (NCERT §2.2, p. 203).
• Villagers petitioned panchayats against extortionate taxation and begar (unpaid labour) by superior castes/officials; peasants resisted by desertion of the village when reconciliation failed (NCERT §2.2, p. 203–204).
• Marathi documents show artisans formed up to 25 per cent of village households; in Maharashtra artisan lands became miras/watan (hereditary holdings); a goods-for-services system later called the jajmani system existed though the term itself was not in use then (NCERT §2.3, p. 204–205).
• Nineteenth-century British officials called the village a "little republic" — but Deep caste-gender inequities and a strong cash nexus (revenue assessed and collected in cash) belie this image (NCERT §2.4, p. 205).
• Women and men worked together in fields — men ploughed/tilled, women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed; menstruating women could not touch the plough or potter's wheel in western India or enter betel groves in Bengal (NCERT §3, p. 206).
• Women's labour was central to artisanal tasks — spinning yarn, sifting/kneading clay, embroidery; commercialised products demanded more female labour (NCERT §3, p. 206).
• Peasant communities practised bride-price (not dowry) and accepted remarriage of widows and divorced women — distinct from elite custom (NCERT §3, p. 207).
• Hindu and Muslim women inherited zamindaris which they could sell/mortgage; the 18th-century Rajshahi zamindari was headed by a woman (NCERT §3, p. 207).
• Forests (jangal/dense or kharbandi/scrub) covered an estimated ~40 per cent of the subcontinent; forest dwellers called jangli lived by gathering, hunting and shifting agriculture — among Bhils, spring = forest produce, summer = fishing, monsoon = cultivation, autumn-winter = hunting (NCERT §4.1, p. 208).
• The state called the forest a mawas (place of refuge for rebels); levied peshkash from forest people that included elephants; the Mughal hunt symbolised the emperor's connection with all subjects (NCERT §4.1–4.2, p. 208–209).
• Tribal chiefs became zamindars and even kings — Sind tribes had 6,000 cavalry/7,000 infantry; Ahom kings had paiks rendering military service for land, and made wild-elephant capture a royal monopoly (NCERT §4.2, p. 210).
• Zamindars were landed proprietors who lived off agriculture without directly cultivating; their privileges came from caste and from khidmat (service) to the state (NCERT §5, p. 211).
• They held extensive personal milkiyat (property) lands cultivated by hired/servile labour and freely saleable, bequeathable or mortgageable; collected revenue on the state's behalf for compensation; held fortresses (qilachas) and armed contingents (NCERT §5, p. 211).
• According to the Ain, zamindars together commanded 384,558 cavalry, 4,277,057 infantry, 1,863 elephants, 4,260 cannons and 4,500 boats (NCERT box "A parallel army!", p. 212).
• Zamindari was concentrated in an "upper-caste" Brahmana-Rajput combine, with intermediate castes and Muslim zamindars; expansion happened by conquest (with imperial sanad), colonisation of new lands, transfer of rights, state order and purchase — and by clan/lineage consolidation (Rajputs, Jats, Sadgops) (NCERT §5, p. 211–212).
• Zamindars settled cultivators with cash loans, established haats (markets) and sold milkiyat produce — accelerating monetisation; yet bhakti saints did not condemn them (criticising revenue officials instead), and peasants often joined zamindar-led uprisings against the state (NCERT §5, p. 212–213).
• The Mughal land-revenue process had two stages — assessment and actual collection; the assessed amount was jama, the collected amount hasil (NCERT §6, p. 213).
• Akbar instructed the amil-guzar (revenue collector) to prefer cash but keep payment in kind open; both cultivated and cultivable lands were measured, and Aurangzeb in 1665 ordered annual asamiwar records of cultivators (NCERT §6, p. 213).
• The Ain (quoting Akbar's classification) recognised four land types — polaj (annually cultivated, never fallow), parauti (rested to recover strength), chachar (fallow 3–4 years), banjar (fallow 5+ years); polaj and parauti had three grades (good, middling, bad); one-third of the medium produce was the royal due (NCERT Source 5, p. 214).
• Methods of collection included kankut (estimate by appraisement; kan = grain, kut = estimate), batai/bhaoli (division after threshing in the parties' presence), khet-batai (fields divided after sowing) and lang batai (heaps divided after cutting) (NCERT Source 6, p. 215).
• The mansabdari system — military-cum-bureaucratic apparatus — included some paid in cash (naqdi) and the majority through jagirs (revenue assignments), with periodic transfers (NCERT box, p. 214).
• Aurangzeb (1665) ordered amins of parganas to record actual conditions of cultivation (maujudat) village-by-village (asamiwar) and assess jama considering both government kifayat (financial interests) and peasant welfare (NCERT Source 7, p. 215).
• During the 16th–18th centuries massive silver bullion inflows from the New World via Europe, Turkey, Persia, the Red Sea and Japan reached India, enabling unprecedented minting and circulation of the silver rupya; Giovanni Careri (c. 1690) testified to this flow (NCERT §7, p. 215–216, Source 8 p. 217).
• The Mughal state was contemporary with three other large Asian empires — Ming (China), Safavid (Iran), Ottoman (Turkey) — and their stability supported overland trade from China to the Mediterranean (NCERT §7, p. 215).
• The Ain-i Akbari was completed in 1598 (Akbar's 42nd regnal year) after five revisions; it was the third book of the larger Akbar Nama project (the first two books were historical narrative) (NCERT §8, p. 217).
• The Ain has five books (daftars) — (1) manzil-abadi (imperial household), (2) sipah-abadi (military/civil administration and mansabdar biographies), (3) mulk-abadi (fiscal details and Account of the Twelve Provinces), (4) and (5) on religious, literary and cultural traditions plus Akbar's sayings (NCERT §8, p. 217–218).
• Mulk-abadi gave sarkar-level tables with eight columns — pargana/mahal, qila (forts), arazi/zamin-i paimuda (measured area), naqdi (cash revenue assessed), suyurghal (revenue grants in charity), zamindars, and details of zamindar caste and troops (sawar/piyada/fil) (NCERT §8, p. 218).
• Limitations of the Ain — totalling errors (slips of arithmetic/transcription); data not collected uniformly (caste data of zamindars missing for Bengal and Orissa); prices and wages derived mainly from Agra and limited for the rest of the country (NCERT §8, p. 220).
• Strengths — quantitative numbers were reproduced in words to minimise transcription errors; oral testimonies were cross-checked; Abu'l Fazl moved Mughal chronicling beyond mere political history to record society, products and people (NCERT §8, p. 220–221).

2.2 Definitions to memorise

2.3 Diagrams / processes to remember

• Fig. 8.2 (p. 199) — Reconstructed Persian wheel (rahat): two rope-circles with wooden strips holding pitchers, bullock-turned wheel mechanism.
• Fig. 8.3 (p. 201) — Early 19th-century painting of a Punjab village showing women, men and architecture.
• Fig. 8.4 (p. 203) — Village elders and tax collectors meeting (panchayat scene).
• Fig. 8.9 (p. 208) — Shah Jahan hunting nilgais (Badshah Nama) — symbolic of just rule.
• Map 1 (p. 214) — Expansion of the Mughal Empire under Babur (1530), Akbar (1605) and Aurangzeb (1707).
• Fig. 8.11, 8.12 (p. 215–216) — Silver rupya of Akbar and Aurangzeb.
• Eight-column sarkar table format of the mulk-abadi (p. 218) — pargana/mahal, qila, measured area, naqdi, suyurghal, zamindars, zamindar castes, zamindar troops.

2.5 Timeline / Key events

2.4 Common confusions / NTA trap points

• Jama vs Hasil — jama is the assessed amount; hasil is the actually collected amount. NTA loves swapping these.
• Khud-kashta vs Pahi-kashta — khud-kashta are villagers cultivating their own village lands; pahi-kashta are outsiders cultivating elsewhere on contract.
• Polaj / Parauti / Chachar / Banjar — the duration of fallow distinguishes them (never / temporary / 3–4 years / 5+ years). Polaj and parauti (only) have three grades.
• Kankut vs Batai — kankut is estimation of standing crop; batai (bhaoli) is division of the actually-reaped heap. Khet-batai = after sowing; lang batai = after cutting.
• Jins-i kamil ≠ all crops — only cash crops (cotton, sugarcane, oilseeds, lentils), not basic staples like rice/wheat.
• Ain's five daftars — only the first three deal with administration; books 4 and 5 are on religious-cultural traditions and Akbar's sayings.
• Ain's limitations — caste data of zamindars missing for Bengal and Orissa; prices/wages mostly from Agra. Don't confuse with strengths.
• Bride-price vs dowry — peasant/artisan communities had bride-price, distinct from elite dowry custom.