Peasants, Zamindars and the State Class 12 Notes History Chapter 8 - CBSE

Chapter : 8

What Are Peasants, Zamindars And The State ?

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Chronicles and documents from the Mughal court were the main sources of the Mughal history .
One of the most important chronicles was the Ain-i Akbari authored by Akbar’s court historian Abu’lFazl.
This text meticulously recorded the arrangements made by the state to ensure cultivation, to enable the collection of revenue by the agencies of the state and to regulate the relationship between the state and rural magnates, the zamindars.
Agriculture was the backbone of Mughal economy. During the Mughal period the basic unit of agricultural society was the village.
The village were inhabited by the peasants. Peasants were involved in many works that made agricultural production possible.
They used to till the soil, sow the seeds and harvest the crop. Besides it was their labour that contributed the production of agro based goods such as sugar and oil.
Peasants were main elements of agrarian society. They did not write about themselves.
The chronicles and documents of the Mughal court were the main sources to study the agrarian history of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Besides Ain-I-Akbari we have many other sources to supplement information related to the agrarian economy of Mughal period.
Important among them are detailed revenue records from Gujarat, Maharastra and Rajastan.
Further, the records of English East India Company provides a lot of information about the Mughal agrarian society.
During the Mughal period the term 'raiyat' or 'muzarian' was used to denote a peasant. The term 'kisan' or 'asami' was also used to denote the peasants.
According to the 17th century sources there was two kinds of peasants. They were Khud-Kashta and Pahi-Kashta. Khud-Kashta were residents of the village in which they held their lands. They were permanent resident cultivators of the village.
Pahi Kashta were non-resident cultivators. They belonged to some other village, but cultivated lands on a contractual basis. They did not cultivate land on permanent basis.
Monsoons remained the backbone of Indian agriculture. But there were crops which required additional water.
Artificial systems of irrigation had to be devised for this. Irrigation projects received state support as well.
State undertook digging of new canals and repairing of old canals. They used Persian wheel for irrigation.
Agriculture was organised around two major seasons – the Kharif (Autumn) and the 'Rabi' (Spring).
Most regions produced a minimum of two crops a year. Enormous variety of crops were produced. An abundance of crops was an important feature of Mughal State.
The state encouraged the peasants to cultivate crops not only for subsistence but also for commercial production.
'Jinsi-i-kamil' is a term often used in sources. The literal meaning of the term is 'perfect crops'.
Peasants were encouraged to cultivate crops by the Mughal state. Among Jins-i-kamil, cotton and sugarcane were particularly important.
Main social group in village community during the Mughal period were the cultivators, the Panchayat and the Village headman (muqaddam or mandal)
The cultivators were a heterogeneous group. There existed deep inequalities on the basis of caste.
A sizeable number of villagers worked as menials or agricultural labourers. Some caste groups were assigned menial tasks.
They had the least resources and occupied lowest position in the caste society.
In Muslim communities menials like halalkhoran (scavengers) were housed outside the boundaries of the village; similarly the mallajzadas (sons of boatmen) were comparable to slaves.
There was a direct correlation between caste, poverty and social status at the lower strata of society.
The village panchayat was an assembly of elders, usually important people of the village with hereditary xrights over their property.
In mixed caste villages, the panchayat was usually a heterogeneous body. The village menial-cum-agricultural workers were not given representation in the panchayat.
The discussion made by these panchayats were binding on the members. The panchayat was headed by a headman known as muqaddam or mandal.
The headman was chosen through the consensus of the village elders. The chief duty of the headman was to supervise the preparation of village accounts.
To prepare the account, he was assisted by the accountant or patwari of the panchayat. Panchayat ensure caste boundaries among the various communities.
It was the duty of the village headman to watch the conduct of the members of the village community to prevent any offence against their caste.
The panchayat had the authority to levy fines and expel any one from the community. In addition to the village panchayat each caste in the village had its own jati panchayat.
They had considerable authority in the village community. They had to take some responsibilities.
They settled civil disputes among the members. They worked as mediators in land disputes.
They decided whether marriages were held according to the rules of a particular caste group.
They decided the protocol to be followed at village function.
Women played an important role in agrarian society during the medieval period.
Women and men had to work shoulder to shoulder in the fields.
Men tilled and ploughed, while women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed the harvest.
Artisan tasks such as spinning yarn, sifting and kneading clay for pottery, and embroidery were among the many aspects of production dependent on female labour .
Women were considered as important resources in agrarian society because they were child bearers in a society dependent on labour.
But the high mortality rate among women decreased. This led the origin of new customs in peasant and artisan communities.
Many rural communities started the practice of giving bride price to the bride's family. The position of women among the landed gentry was better.
They had the right to inherit property. They actively participated in the rural land market as sellers of property inherited by them.
Revenue from the land was the economic mainstay of the Mughal Empire. It was therefore vital for the state to create an administrative system to ensure control over agricultural production, and to fix and collect revenue from across the empire.
This system included the office of the diwan who was responsible for supervising the fiscal system of the empire. Thus, revenue officials and record keepers penetrated the agricultural domain and became a decisive agent in shaping agrarian relations.
The land revenue arrangements consisted of two stages – first, assessment and then actual collection. The jama was the amount assessed and hasil, the amount collected.
Akbar decreed ordered amil-guzaror revenue collector that he should strive to make cultivators pay in cash, the option of payment in kind was also to be kept open.
The Mughal Empire was the large territorial empires in Asia among the Ming (China),Safavid (Iran) and Ottoman (Turkey) empires that had managed to consolidate power and resources during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The political stability achieved by all these empires helped create vibrant networks of overland trade from China to the Mediterranean Sea.
Voyages of discovery and the opening up of the New World (America) resulted in a massive expansion of India’s trade with Europe.
The period between the 16th and 17th centuries was also marked a remarkable stability in the availability of metal currency, particularly the silver rupya in India.
The Ain gives detailed accounts of the organisation of the court, administration and army, the sources of revenue and the physical layout of the provinces of Akbar’s empire and the literary, cultural, religious traditions of the people and quantitative information of the provinces.
The Ain is made up of five books (daftars), of which the first three books describe the administration.
Although the Ain was officially sponsored to record detailed information to facilitate Emperor Akbar, it was much more than a reproduction of official papers.
The Ain remains an extraordinary document of its times.