Peasants, Zamindars and the State

About 85 per cent of India’s people lived in villages in the 16th and 17th centuries. Peasants and landed elites both claimed shares of the produce — relationships of cooperation, competition and conflict that made up rural society. From outside came the Mughal state, which drew the bulk of its income from agriculture and whose agents — assessors, collectors, record keepers — tried to ensure cultivation and a regular share. Because many crops were grown for sale, trade, money and markets linked villages to towns.

• Links: lehs201 (Bernier’s claim of crown ownership and ‘no middle state’ — this chapter tests it; Tavernier’s village shroff); lehs202 and lehs203 (sufis among new settlers; Vijayanagara’s irrigation for comparison); Themes I, Theme 2 (early agrarian change, revenue and land grants). The colonial sequel — zamindari settlements under Cornwallis — is in our Economics chapter keec101 and in Themes III. Class 7 Our Pasts II introduces the Mughals and tribes.
• UPSC: Prelims asks about land revenue under Akbar and zabt, jagirdars and zamindars, mansabdars, Abu’l Fazl and the Ain, administrative units, irrigation devices and introduced crops. Mains: Mughal economy and society in GS1 Art & Culture/history; agrarian structures as background to modern land reforms.

• Sources: Ain-i Akbari (Abu’l Fazl, completed 1598) — rich but ‘a view from the top’; regional revenue records (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan); East India Company records; Babur Nama.
• Peasants: raiyat/muzarian, kisan/asami; khud-kashta (resident) vs pahi-kashta (non-resident); individual ownership; light plough, Persian wheel, canals; kharif/rabi, do-fasla; jins-i kamil; new crops incl. tobacco, maize, chillies.
• Village: panchayat of elders (an oligarchy), headman muqaddam/mandal, patwari; jati panchayats; artisans (up to 25%) paid in kind or land; not a ‘little republic’; cash nexus.
• Women sowed, weeded, threshed, spun; bride-price, remarriage; petitions to panchayats; landed women inherited and sold land (Rajshahi zamindari). Forests (c. 40%): Bhils’ seasonal round; peshkash, trade, tribal kingdoms.
• Zamindars: milkiyat, khidmat, forts (qilachas) and troops; caste-linked; colonised land; often allied with peasants against the state.
• Revenue: diwan; jama (assessed) vs hasil (collected); polaj/parauti/chachar/banjar; one-third of medium produce; cash preferred, kind possible (kankut, batai…); silver inflow → rupya; mansabdars paid in cash or jagirs.

The basic unit was the village, where peasants tilled, sowed and harvested through the year and also produced agro-based goods such as sugar and oil. But dry tracts, hills and large forests were not farmed the same way — a varied topography.

Sources. Peasants did not write about themselves. The main sources for the 16th and early 17th centuries are Mughal court chronicles and documents, above all the Ain-i Akbari by Akbar’s court historian Abu’l Fazl, which recorded the state’s arrangements for cultivation, revenue collection and relations with the zamindars. Its central purpose was to present Akbar’s empire as one of social harmony under a strong ruling class, where any revolt was predestined to fail — so what it says about peasants is a view from the top. It can be supplemented by revenue records from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan (17th–18th centuries) and the East India Company’s records on eastern India, which document conflicts and reveal peasants’ expectations of fairness from the state.

Peasants and their lands. Indo-Persian sources call a peasant raiyat (plural riaya) or muzarian; also kisan or asami. Seventeenth-century sources distinguish khud-kashta (residents of the village where they held land) and pahi-kashta (non-resident cultivators working land elsewhere on contract) — by choice (better revenue terms) or compulsion (distress after famine). An average north Indian peasant seldom had more than a pair of bullocks and two ploughs; in Gujarat about six acres made one affluent, while in Bengal five acres was the upper limit of an average farm and ten made one a rich asami. Cultivation rested on individual ownership; peasant lands were bought and sold like other property. A 19th-century description of the Delhi–Agra region, which NCERT says applies to the 17th, tells of peasants marking each field’s limits with borders of earth, brick and thorn, so that thousands of fields could be counted in a village.

Irrigation and technology. Abundant land, available labour and peasant mobility explain the constant expansion of agriculture. Staples dominated — rice where rainfall reached 40 inches or more, then wheat and millets as rainfall decreased. The monsoon was the backbone, but some crops needed extra water. The state also supported irrigation: digging new canals (nahr, nala) and repairing old ones, such as the shahnahr in the Punjab under Shah Jahan. Technology harnessed cattle: a light wooden plough with an iron tip (coulter) made shallow furrows that preserved moisture in the hot months; a drill pulled by oxen planted seed, though broadcasting was most common; hoeing and weeding used a narrow iron blade with a small wooden handle.

An abundance of crops. Agriculture followed two cycles, kharif (autumn) and rabi (spring); most regions grew at least two crops a year (do-fasla), some three. The Ain says the province of Agra produced 39 varieties of crops and Delhi 43 over the two seasons; Bengal grew 50 kinds of rice. Agriculture was not only subsistence: sources speak of jins-i kamil (‘perfect crops’), which the state encouraged because they paid more revenue — cotton (central India, Deccan) and sugarcane (Bengal sugar) above all, plus oilseeds such as mustard, and lentils. Subsistence and commercial production were intertwined on the same holding. New crops arrived in the 17th century: maize (via Africa and Spain), listed among western India’s major crops; tomatoes, potatoes, chillies, pineapple and papaya from the New World.

Peasants owned land individually but belonged to a collective village community of three constituents: the cultivators, the panchayat and the headman (muqaddam or mandal).

Caste and the rural milieu. Caste made cultivators highly unequal. Many worked as menials or agricultural labourers (majur); despite abundant land, certain castes were assigned menial tasks and kept poor — a large section of villagers with the fewest resources, constrained by the caste hierarchy, ‘much like the Dalits of modern India’ (NCERT). Such distinctions permeated other communities too: among Muslims, halalkhoran (scavengers) were housed outside village boundaries; in Bihar, mallahzadas (‘sons of boatmen’) were comparable to slaves. Caste, poverty and status correlated strongly at the bottom, less in the middle: a 17th-century Marwar manual shows Rajputs as peasants alongside Jats; the Gauravas near Vrindavan sought Rajput status; Ahirs, Gujars and Malis rose through profitable cattle-rearing and horticulture; in the east, pastoral and fishing castes such as the Sadgops and Kaivartas acquired peasant status.

Panchayats and headmen. The panchayat was an assembly of elders, usually important villagers with hereditary property rights — an oligarchy that in mixed-caste villages represented various castes, though menial workers were unlikely to be included; its decisions were binding. Its head, the muqaddam/mandal, was chosen (some sources say) by consensus of the elders, ratified by the zamindar, and could be dismissed if he lost their confidence. His chief task was supervising village accounts, helped by the patwari. The panchayat’s common fund paid for entertaining visiting revenue officials, relief after calamities such as floods, and works like a bund or canal that peasants could not afford alone. It upheld caste boundaries — in eastern India marriages took place before the mandal — and could fine or expel offenders (making them outcastes, unable to practise their profession), usually for a limited period. Each caste had its own jati panchayat; in Rajasthan these arbitrated civil disputes between castes, contested land claims, marriage norms and ritual precedence, and the state generally respected their decisions except in criminal matters.

Petitions and resistance. Archives from Rajasthan and Maharashtra hold petitions to panchayats against extortionate taxes or begar demanded by ‘superior’ castes or state officials — usually from the lowest rungs, sometimes collectively by a caste or community — especially when demands in drought threatened subsistence. Petitioners saw the right to a basic minimum for survival as sanctioned by custom and the panchayat as a court of appeal to make the state meet its moral obligations. Outcomes varied; panchayats often suggested compromise; if that failed, peasants might desert the village — effective because uncultivated land was available and labour was scarce.

Village artisans. Marathi documents and early British surveys show artisans could form up to 25 per cent of village households. The line between artisan and peasant was fluid: cultivators dyed cloth, printed textiles, fired pottery and made tools in slack seasons between sowing, weeding and harvesting. Potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers, even goldsmiths were compensated with a share of the harvest or an allotment of land (often cultivable waste, decided by the panchayat) — in Maharashtra their miras or watan; or by negotiated goods-for-services arrangements, as with Bengal zamindars paying blacksmiths, carpenters and goldsmiths a small daily allowance and ‘diet money’. This later came to be called the jajmani system, a term not used in the 16th–17th centuries. Cash payment was also known.

A ‘little republic’? Some 19th-century British officials saw the village as a ‘little republic’ of fraternal partners sharing resources. It was not egalitarian: assets were individually owned, caste and gender inequalities were deep, and a few powerful people ran affairs, exploited the weak and dispensed justice. A cash nexus already linked villages and towns: in the Mughal heartland revenue was assessed and collected in cash, and weavers and producers of cotton, silk or indigo got advances or wages in cash.

Women and men worked shoulder to shoulder: men tilled and ploughed; women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed. With nucleated villages and household farming, production rested on the whole household’s labour, so a strict split between home (women) and world (men) was impossible. Biases tied to women’s biological functions persisted: menstruating women could not touch the plough or potter’s wheel in western India, or enter betel (paan) groves in Bengal. Spinning, sifting and kneading clay, and embroidery depended on women’s labour — the more commercialised the product, the greater the demand on it; peasant and artisan women went to employers’ houses and markets.

Women were valued as child bearers in a labour-hungry society, but high female mortality (malnutrition, frequent pregnancies, childbirth) caused a shortage of wives. Hence customs among peasants and artisans differed from elites: bride-price rather than dowry; remarriage accepted for divorced and widowed women. Fear of losing control meant strict male authority; households were headed by men, who could punish suspected infidelity harshly. Petitions in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra record wives seeking justice against husbands’ infidelity or neglect of wife and children by the male head (grihasthi); male infidelity was not always punished, but the state and ‘superior’ castes intervened to ensure the family was provided for. Women’s names were usually left out of the record — the petitioner was ‘mother, sister or wife’ of the male head. Among the landed gentry women could inherit property: in the Punjab women, including widows, sold inherited land; Hindu and Muslim women inherited zamindaris they could sell or mortgage; women zamindars were known in 18th-century Bengal, and the great Rajshahi zamindari had a woman at its head.

Beyond settled villages lay huge forests — dense forest (jangal) or scrub (kharbandi) — across eastern, central and northern India (including the Terai), Jharkhand, the Western Ghats and the Deccan; informed guesses suggest an average forest cover of about 40 per cent. Forest dwellers were termed jangli, which then meant living by gathering, hunting and shifting cultivation — not ‘uncivilised’ as in today’s usage. Activities were seasonal: among the Bhils, spring for forest produce, summer for fishing, the monsoon for cultivation, autumn and winter for hunting — a cycle that kept them mobile. For the state the forest was a place of refuge (mawas) for troublemakers; Babur wrote that jungles helped people of a pargana become rebellious and refuse taxes.

Inroads into forests. The state needed elephants, so peshkash (tribute) from forest people often included them. In Mughal ideology the hunt symbolised the state’s concern for all subjects: hunting expeditions let the emperor travel and personally hear grievances, and court painters inserted a small scene in hunting pictures as a symbol of a harmonious reign. Commercial agriculture also reached the forest: honey, beeswax and gum lac were in demand (lac became a major overseas export in the 17th century), elephants were captured and sold, and barter was common; the Lohanis of the Punjab traded overland between India and Afghanistan. Socially, tribal chiefs became zamindars and some became kings, raising armies from their lineages: Sind tribes had 6,000 cavalry and 7,000 infantry; the Ahom kings of Assam had paiks, obliged to military service in return for land, and made capturing wild elephants a royal monopoly. The transition to monarchy was fully developed by the 16th century, as the Ain notes for the north-east; the Koch kings subjugated neighbouring tribes through the 16th–17th centuries. Some historians suggest sufi pirs helped the slow acceptance of Islam among newly settled agricultural communities (lehs202).

Zamindars lived off agriculture without directly working the land. They were landed proprietors with social and economic privileges owing to caste and to services (khidmat) they performed for the state. They held extensive personal lands, milkiyat (property), cultivated for their own use with hired or servile labour, which they could sell, bequeath or mortgage. Their power also came from collecting revenue for the state (for which they were paid) and from military resources: most had fortresses (qilachas) and armed contingents of cavalry, artillery and infantry. If rural society were a pyramid, zamindars were its narrow apex. Abu’l Fazl’s account suggests an ‘upper-caste’ Brahmana–Rajput combine controlled rural society, with sizeable intermediate-caste and many Muslim zamindaris.

Origins and growth. Some zamindaris began with conquest — a strong chieftain dispossessing weaker people — though the state would hardly allow this without confirmation by an imperial order (sanad). More important were slow processes: colonising new land, transfer of rights, state orders and purchase, which let relatively ‘lower’ castes enter the ranks since zamindaris were briskly bought and sold. Rajputs and Jats consolidated lineage-based zamindaris across north India; peasant-pastoralists such as the Sadgops built powerful zamindaris in central and south-western Bengal. Zamindars led the colonisation of land, settled cultivators with tools and cash loans, sold produce from milkiyat lands and set up markets (haats) — accelerating monetisation.

Exploiters or patrons? Zamindars were undoubtedly an exploitative class, but their relationship with peasants had reciprocity, paternalism and patronage. Two signs: the bhakti saints, who condemned caste-based oppression, did not portray zamindars (or moneylenders) as the oppressors — their target was usually the state’s revenue official; and in many 17th-century agrarian uprisings in north India, zamindars often had peasant support against the state.

Land revenue was the economic mainstay of the empire. The state built an apparatus — headed by the office (daftar) of the diwan, who supervised the fiscal system — whose officials and record keepers entered the agricultural world and shaped agrarian relations. The state first sought information on the extent and produce of land, then fixed taxes in two stages: assessment and collection. Jama was the amount assessed; hasil the amount collected. Akbar instructed the amil-guzar (revenue collector) to strive for cash but keep payment in kind open. The state tried to maximise its claims, though local conditions sometimes thwarted collection. Cultivated and cultivable lands were measured in each province; the Ain compiled the aggregates; later emperors continued — in 1665 Aurangzeb ordered annual records of the number of cultivators in each village. But large forest areas were never measured.

The Mughal Empire was one of the large Asian territorial empires — with the Ming (China), Safavid (Iran) and Ottoman (Turkey) — whose stability fostered overland trade from China to the Mediterranean. Voyages of discovery and the opening of the New World massively expanded Asia’s — especially India’s — trade with Europe, in both geography and goods. Expanding trade brought huge amounts of silver bullion into Asia to pay for Indian goods, and much of it came to India, which lacked silver. The 16th–18th centuries therefore saw remarkable stability in metal currency, especially the silver rupya: an unprecedented expansion of minting and money circulation, and the state’s ability to collect taxes and revenue in cash.

The Ain-i Akbari was the culmination of a large historical and administrative project of classification by Abu’l Fazl at Akbar’s order, completed in 1598, the emperor’s 42nd regnal year, after five revisions. It is the third book of the Akbar Nama, whose first two books are narrative history. It is a compendium of imperial regulations and a gazetteer: court, administration, army, revenue sources, the layout of provinces, and the literary, cultural and religious traditions of the people, with intricate quantitative data — a view from the centre, from society’s apex. It has five books (daftars): manzil-abadi (the imperial household), sipah-abadi (military and civil administration, with sketches of mansabdars, scholars, poets and artists), mulk-abadi (the fiscal side: revenue rates and the ‘Account of the Twelve Provinces’, with each suba’s geography, economy, divisions into sarkars, parganas and mahals, measured area and assessed jama), and books four and five on religious, literary and cultural traditions and Akbar’s ‘auspicious sayings’. The sarkar tables have eight columns: parganat/mahal; qila (forts); arazi and zamin-i paimuda (measured area); naqdi (cash revenue); suyurghal (charity grants); zamindars; and their castes and troops (horsemen, foot soldiers, elephants).

Strengths and limits. Though official, the Ain was more than a copy of papers: five revisions show caution and a search for authenticity; oral testimonies were cross-checked; numbers were written out in words to reduce copying errors. Historians note problems: numerous totalling errors (minor slips by assistants); uneven data — caste composition of zamindars missing for Bengal and Orissa; and prices and wages mainly from around Agra, of limited relevance elsewhere. Still, it broke with chroniclers who wrote mostly of wars and dynasties by recording the empire and its people, and remains a benchmark for India around 1600 — its quantitative evidence on agrarian relations is uncontested, and its information on people, professions and the imperial establishment lets historians reconstruct the social fabric.

Q1–5: 100–150 words. Q6–9: short essays of 250–300 words. Try each first.

Numbers

One-liners

• Ain-i Akbari: rich data, but a view from the top — cross-check with regional records.
• Khud-kashta resident, pahi-kashta non-resident; land individually owned and saleable.
• Kharif + rabi = do-fasla; jins-i kamil = cash crops like cotton and sugarcane.
• Panchayat: oligarchy of elders; headman muqaddam/mandal; patwari keeps accounts.
• Petitions, compromise, or desertion — peasants’ weapons against excess demands.
• Women worked in fields and crafts; bride-price, remarriage; landed women inherited zamindaris.
• Forests c. 40%: Bhils’ seasonal round; peshkash, lac, elephants; chiefs became kings.
• Zamindars: milkiyat, khidmat, forts and troops — exploitative, yet allies against the state.
• Jama assessed, hasil collected; one-third of medium produce; cash preferred, kind possible.
• New World silver → rupya → cash revenue and a monetised countryside.

Traps to avoid

• Jama = assessed; hasil = collected — not the other way round.
• Polaj never fallow; parauti fallow ‘for a time’; chachar 3–4 years; banjar 5+ years.
• Jagirs were transferable and non-hereditary; zamindari rights were usually hereditary (UPSC 2019).
• Ascending units: pargana → sarkar → suba (UPSC 2021).
• Revenue under Akbar was not paid directly into the central treasury (UPSC 1980).
• Tobacco and chillies were not introduced by the English (UPSC 2012).
• The Ain is the third book of the Akbar Nama, completed 1598.
• ‘Jajmani’ is a later term; NCERT avoids it for the 16th–17th centuries.
• NCERT glosses Careri’s ‘Hyeman’ as Oman; the coffee port Mocha is in Yemen.
• Bayana (Source 2) is in present-day Rajasthan, not Uttar Pradesh.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Revenue and administration: land revenue as kings’ main income (1979), Akbar’s revenue system (1980), zabt in cash (1990), crops and assessment not English introductions (2012), jagirdar vs zamindar (2019), pargana–sarkar–suba (2021).
• Officials and sources: mansabdars (1979), jagirdars (1980), Abu’l Fazl and the Ain (1988); technology: araghatta (2016).
• Make a terms table: raiyat, khud-kashta, pahi-kashta, jins-i kamil, muqaddam, patwari, milkiyat, khidmat, qilacha, sanad, jama, hasil, polaj–banjar, kankut, batai, peshkash, naqdi, jagir.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• No GS1 question has yet been built squarely on this chapter, but it underpins questions on Mughal economy and society, sources of medieval history (use the Ain’s strengths and limits), and agrarian structure as background to colonial settlements and post-Independence zamindari abolition.
• Frame: who held rights (peasant, zamindar, state) → how surplus was taken (jama/hasil, cash/kind) → how communities regulated themselves (panchayats, caste) → how money and trade connected it all (silver).
• Balance: avoid ‘stagnant village’ clichés (Bernier, lehs201) — show mobility, markets, petitions and negotiation.

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