Mughal Agrarian Society: Peasants, Zamindars and Land Revenue

Who counted as a peasant?

Persian sources most often called a peasant a raiyat or muzarian. Regional words like kisan and asami also appear. Exams ask you to match these terms.

What was the difference between khud-kashta and pahi-kashta?

A khud-kashta peasant farmed land in his own village. A pahi-kashta peasant farmed land in a different village. There were two reasons for that move.

• Some chose it for better revenue terms.
• Others were forced out by famine or hardship.

How much land did a peasant hold?

Most north Indian peasants owned barely a pair of bullocks and two ploughs. In Gujarat, six acres counted as an affluent holding. In Bengal, ten acres made a peasant genuinely rich.

Did peasants own their land?

Yes. Peasant land was private property. It could be bought and sold, like the land of any other proprietor. Peasants also had a hereditary right to cultivate. They could not be thrown off the land as long as they paid the revenue.

What did Babur notice about Indian farming?

Emperor Babur wrote in his memoirs, around 1526, that Indian villages could vanish and reappear within days. Crops depended on rain, not on fixed works like canals. So people could leave a place and settle somewhere new very quickly.

Which seasons did farmers follow?

Farming followed two cycles, kharif and rabi. Most regions grew at least two crops each year. Some, with good water, grew three.

Why did the state push cash crops?

The state encouraged high-value crops like cotton and sugarcane. These were called jins-i-kamil, or “perfect crops”. They brought in more revenue than plain food grains. For such crops the state demand was always taken in cash.

Which new crops arrived?

New World crops reached India in the seventeenth century.

• Tomatoes, potatoes and chillies.
• Maize.
• Tobacco, which was known by 1604.

Jahangir banned tobacco because he feared addiction. Despite the ban, it became a major crop across the country.

What held a Mughal village together?

The village rested on three parts.

• The cultivators.
• The panchayat, a council of elders.
• The headman, called muqaddam or mandal.

Was the village an equal “little republic”?

No. Some British officials later romanticised the village this way. In fact, caste hierarchy and unequal landholding shaped it deeply. Menial castes did the poorest-paid work.

What did the headman and the patwari do?

The muqaddam supervised village accounts with an accountant called the patwari. But mandals were often accused of underpaying their own revenue. They shifted the burden onto smaller peasants.

What was a jati panchayat?

Beyond the village panchayat, each caste ran its own jati panchayat. It settled land disputes and marriage norms within that caste.

What role did women play?

Men tilled and ploughed. Women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed. Both worked the fields as one household unit.

• Spinning yarn, kneading clay for pottery and embroidery relied on female labour.
• The more commercial the product, the more it depended on women’s work.
• Many rural groups practised bride-price rather than dowry.
• They also treated remarriage of widows and divorced women as proper.

Women, including widows, could inherit and sell zamindaris. One of Bengal’s largest eighteenth-century zamindaris, Rajshahi, was headed by a woman.

Who was a zamindar?

A zamindar was a landed proprietor who lived off agriculture without farming himself. His status came from caste and from services (khidmat) to the state. The word means holder of land.

What did zamindars hold?

Zamindars held private milkiyat lands. Hired or servile labour worked them. They could sell, mortgage or bequeath this land freely.

Did zamindars have armies?

Most kept forts (qilachas) and armed followers. The Ain records the empire’s combined zamindar forces at over 384,000 cavalry and 4.2 million infantry.

Were zamindars simply exploiters?

Not always. The picture is mixed.

• The state allowed a zamindar a hereditary share of the produce.
• Bhakti saints who condemned caste rarely blamed zamindars. They targeted state revenue officials instead.
• In many peasant revolts, zamindars sided with the peasants against the state.

In Bengal a zamindar was often a hereditary tax collector who kept 10 percent of what he collected.

How is a zamindar different from a jagirdar?

A jagirdar held a jagir, a grant of revenue in place of salary. The jagirdar collected taxes for his own pay and sent the rest to the treasury. A zamindar held a hereditary local right. Jagirs could be moved. Zamindari rights usually stayed in the family.

What were jama and hasil?

The jama was the revenue assessed on paper. The hasil was the revenue actually collected. The two often did not match.

How did Akbar’s system begin?

Akbar first took up the plan of Sher Shah. The land was measured, and a crop rate (ray) fixed each crop’s dues by productivity. This was turned each year into a central price schedule.

That caused trouble. The prices were those of the imperial court, which were higher than village prices. Peasants had to hand over a larger share of their crop.

What did Akbar try next?

He went back to yearly assessment. Qanungos, who were local officials, reported the actual produce and prices. But many qanungos were dishonest and hid the real produce. Yearly assessment also hurt both peasants and the state.

What did the karoris do?

After returning from Gujarat in 1573, Akbar took a close interest in revenue. He named officials called karoris across north India. Each was to collect one crore of dams, which was Rs 2,50,000. They also checked the figures the qanungos gave.

What was the dahsala?

In 1580, Akbar brought in the dahsala. The name comes from dah, meaning ten.

• The state worked out the average produce of each crop.
• It also worked out the average prices of the past ten years.
• The state share was one-third of the average produce.
• That share was fixed in cash, as rupees per bigha.

Later, parganas with the same productivity were grouped into assessment circles. So peasants paid by local yield and local prices.

Was the dahsala a ten-year settlement?

No. It was not a ten-year settlement, and it was not permanent. The state could still change it. With some changes, Akbar’s settlement stayed the base of the system until the end of the seventeenth century.

How was land measured?

Officials measured the sown area with bamboos linked by iron rings. After that, both peasant and state knew the dues. Peasants got remission if drought or floods ruined the crop.

What is zabti?

The system of measurement and assessment is called zabti. Akbar used it from Lahore to Allahabad, and in Malwa and Gujarat. It is linked with Raja Todar Mal, so it is sometimes called Todar Mal’s bandobast. The dahsala grew out of zabti.

Todar Mal was one of a team of able revenue officials. The dahsala was their joint work.

What other methods did Akbar’s state use?

Several methods ran side by side.

• Batai (also ghalla-bakhshi): the crop was divided in a fixed share between peasant and state.
• Kankut: the standing crop was estimated by sight.
• Nasaq: a rough sum based on past payments.

Under batai, peasants could choose cash or kind, though the state preferred cash. Batai was fair, but it needed many honest officials at harvest time.

How was land classed?

The state looked at how often land was farmed. The Ain gives four classes.

• Polaj: land cultivated almost every year.
• Parauti: land rested to regain fertility. It paid the full rate when farmed again.
• Chachar: land fallow for two to three years in Satish Chandra’s account. Some summaries say three to four years.
• Banjar: land fallow for longer, usually five years or more.

Chachar and banjar paid lower rates at first. The demand rose until the full polaj rate was paid in the fifth or eighth year. That helped bring wasteland under the plough.

Land was also graded good, middling or bad.

What help did peasants get?

The state’s local officer, the amil, was told to act like a father to peasants. He gave taccavi loans for seed, tools and animals. Peasants repaid in easy instalments.

Did Aurangzeb change anything?

In 1665, Aurangzeb ordered detailed village-by-village surveys of cultivation. He wanted to balance state needs against the welfare of peasants.

Where did Mughal silver come from?

India had no natural silver deposits. Yet from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the silver rupee stayed steady. The metal came in through trade.

• New World silver reached Europe.
• It moved on through Ottoman and Persian trade routes.
• It entered India to pay for Indian goods.

The Italian traveller Giovanni Careri wrote, drawing on Bernier, that gold and silver from the Americas ended up in India through Mocha and Basra.

Why did silver matter for revenue?

The steady flow let the state mint coins on a large scale. It could then collect land revenue reliably in cash.

What is the Ain-i-Akbari?

Abu’l Fazl’s Ain-i-Akbari was the third book of the Akbar Nama. He finished it in 1598, after five revisions. Unlike older chronicles of wars and kings, it recorded the empire’s people, products and revenue.

How reliable is it?

It is a real benchmark source, but it has limits.

• It shows the state’s view. It treats revolt against Mughal rule as doomed to fail.
• Coverage is uneven. Zamindar caste data exists for many provinces, but not Bengal or Orissa.
• Price and wage data mostly describe the area around Agra.

How do the dates line up?

Which facts get asked?

A few repeat facts carry most of the marks.

• Raiyat, asami and muzarian all denoted a peasant.
• Pahi-kashta peasants were non-resident cultivators working for better terms or under distress.
• Banjar is land fallow for five years or more.
• Abu’l Fazl wrote the Ain-i-Akbari, completed in 1598.

What is the common trap?

Do not assume zamindars and peasants were always enemies. In the seventeenth century, zamindars often backed peasants in uprisings against the state. A statement that zamindars were exploitative is not wrong. But it does not explain the support they got from peasants.

How should you remember it?

• Khud means own village. Pahi means another village.
• Jama is assessed. Hasil is collected.
• Dahsala means ten-year averages, 1580.
• Zabti means measurement, linked with Todar Mal.