📘 Class 12 History – Chapter 8
🌾 Peasants, Zamindars and the States (NCERT / CBSE)
✳️ Rural Society in 16th – 17th Century India
- 👥 About 85% people lived in villages.
- 🌱 Agriculture = main occupation of peasants (किसान) & zamindars (जमींदार).
- 🤝 Relationship between them: cooperation, competition & conflict.
✳️ Sources of Agrarian Society & Mughal Empire
- 📜 Our knowledge of agriculture comes from Mughal court chronicles & documents.
- 🏡 Village = basic unit of agrarian society → peasants engaged in ploughing, sowing, harvesting.
- ⏳ Major sources = 16th & 17th century records.
✳️ Agriculture & the Mughal Empire
- 🌾 Agriculture = main source of revenue for Mughals.
- 📑 Hence, revenue assessors, collectors & record keepers tried to control rural society.
✳️ Ain-i-Akbari 📖
- 🖋 Written by Abul Fazl in Akbar’s court.
- 🎯 Aim = Blueprint of Mughal Empire & strong ruling class.
- 🏛 Structure → 5 books (daftars):
- 📕 1st – 3rd → Administration of Akbar’s reign.
- 📗 4th – 5th → Religious, literary & cultural traditions + Akbar’s "Shubh Kahan" (auspicious sayings).
- 📌 Despite limitations, Ain-i-Akbari = extraordinary document for that period.
✳️ Other Sources
- 📂 Records from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan (17th–18th C.) → details of govt. income.
- 📘 East India Company documents → useful for Eastern India agriculture.
✳️ Peasants, Land & Agriculture
- 📖 Persian sources use words: Raiyat / Mujarian = peasants.
- 👨🌾 Two categories of peasants:
- 🐂 Avg. North Indian peasant owned 1 pair of oxen + 2 ploughs (or less).
- 🏠 Land = personal property, could be bought & sold.
- 📈 Population growth → Despite famines/epidemics, +50 million (33%) in 200 years.
- ⚠️ Caste restrictions → Some castes forced into low-status work, remained poor.
💧 Irrigation and Technique
- According to Baburnama, India had plenty of land suitable for cultivation, but no running water system (बहता पानी).
- Autumn crops were produced only by rainwater, and surprisingly, spring crops also grew without rainfall.
- Small trees were watered using buckets 🪣 or rahat (Persian wheel – रहट).
- In regions like Lahore and Dipalpur (present-day Pakistan), irrigation was done through rahat.
🌱 Plenty of Crops
- Farmers usually produced two crops a year, and where rainfall/irrigation was sufficient, even three crops annually 🌾🌾🌾.
- Great variety of crops:
- Agra province → 39 varieties 🌿
- Delhi province → 43 varieties 🌽
- Bengal → 50 varieties of rice 🍚
- Cash crops (नकदी फसलें): Cotton, sugar, oilseeds (mustard), and pulses.
- Best crops were called Jins-e-Kamil (श्रेष्ठ फसलें).
- The Mughal state encouraged such crops because they generated higher revenue (अधिक कर आय).
- New crops in the 17th century:
- Maize 🌽 (via Africa & Pakistan) → Main crop of Western India.
- Vegetables like tomato 🍅, potato 🥔, chili 🌶️ from the New World.
- Fruits like pineapple 🍍, papaya 🥭 also introduced.
🚬 Spread of Tobacco
- First reached the Deccan region and then spread to North India (early 17th century).
- Ain-i-Akbari does not mention tobacco among North Indian crops.
- Akbar and nobles first saw tobacco in 1604 CE.
- Smoking habit (in hookah/hubble-bubble – हुक्का) spread quickly.
- Emperor Jahangir even tried to ban tobacco 🚫, but it failed.
- By the late 17th century, tobacco became a major crop, trade, and consumption item.
🏡 Panchayat and Mukhiya
- Panchayat (ग्राम सभा): Assembly of elders (landholders with ancestral rights).
- In multi-caste villages, panchayats represented different communities (समुदाय) but excluded landless laborers.
- The headman was called muqaddam/mandal (मुखिया), chosen by village elders and approved by the zamindar.
- Headman remained until he enjoyed the elders’ confidence, otherwise could be removed.
- Duties of the headman:
- Supervise village accounts 📒 with help of patwari (लेखाकार).
- Manage income & expenditure of the village.
- Panchayat treasury (सामूहिक कोष) was used for:
- Village expenses
- Supporting tax officers during their visits.
- Major role: Ensuring all communities lived within caste norms (जातीय मर्यादा).
🌾 Rural Society in Mughal India
🏺 Rural Artisans
- 👨🏭 Around 25% households in villages belonged to artisans.
- 🔨 Artisans like potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers, and goldsmiths provided services to villagers.
- 🌾 In return, villagers paid them through part of the crop or piece of land (ज़मीन).
- ⚖️ Payment was often decided by the Panchayat (village council). In Maharashtra, artisans got hereditary rights on such land.
- 🔄 Sometimes, direct exchange of goods & services (वस्तु-विनिमय) took place between artisans and peasants.
👩🌾 Social & Economic Status of Women
- 🌱 Men ploughed while women sowed, weeded, harvested & processed crops.
- 🧵 Women were engaged in spinning yarn, pottery work, embroidery, kneading clay.
- 🏬 Women worked in fields, markets, and even at employers’ homes when required.
- 💍 In many communities, bride price (दुल्हन मूल्य) was given instead of dowry.
- ♻️ Remarriage allowed for widows & divorcees.
- 🏡 Women had inheritance rights (उत्तराधिकार का अधिकार) in property.
🌳 Jungle and Clan
- 📖 Contemporary works used the word ‘wild’ (जंगली) not as uncivilized, but for people living by forest produce, hunting & shifting cultivation.
- 🍃 Example: Collecting forest products in spring, fishing in summer, cultivation in monsoon, hunting in autumn & winter.
- 🛡️ Babur described forests as shelters (आश्रयस्थल) for rebels who resisted paying taxes.
- 🐘 Forest dwellers often had to supply elephants & other resources to the state.
👑 Zamindars and Their Power
- 🏡 Zamindars were landowners with special social & economic privileges.
- ⚖️ High caste status & services to the state increased their importance.
- 🌾 Zamindars had large personal estates (मिल्की जमीन) cultivated by labourers; they could sell, mortgage, or transfer these lands.
- 💰 They collected taxes on behalf of the state and received financial rewards.
- ⚔️ Many zamindars had their own forts & military resources (cavalry, artillery, infantry).
- 📊 According to Ain-i-Akbari:
- 🐎 3,84,558 horsemen
- 🪖 42,77,057 foot soldiers
- 🐘 1,863 elephants
- 🔥 4,260 cannons
- ⛵ 4,500 boats
📘 Land Revenue System & Economy (Mughal Era)
❇️ Land Revenue System (भूमि राजस्व व्यवस्था)
🔹 Land revenue system had two main phases:
1️⃣ Tax Assessment (कर निर्धारण)
2️⃣ Actual Recovery (वास्तविक वसूली)
🔹 Deposit = prescribed amount (निश्चित रकम)
Received = actual amount recovered (वास्तविक वसूली गई रकम)
🔹 State always tried to keep maximum share of revenue, but due to local conditions, actual recovery was often less.
🔹 Both ploughed land (जुताई की गई भूमि) and cultivable land (खेती योग्य भूमि) were measured.
🔹 During Akbar’s reign, Abul Fazl compiled detailed land records in Ain-i Akbari.
Measurement of land continued even during later emperors.
🔹 In 1665 AD, Aurangzeb instructed revenue officials to maintain annual record of cultivators in each village.
➡️ But large areas (especially forest regions 🌳) remained unmeasured.
📌 Important Terms (महत्वपूर्ण शब्दावली)
1️⃣ Amil (आमिल) → Revenue officer ensuring state rules in provinces.
2️⃣ Polaj (पोलज) → Land cultivated every year without leaving it fallow.
3️⃣ Parauti (परोटी) → Land left fallow for some time to regain fertility.
4️⃣ Chachar (चाचर) → Land left uncultivated for 3–4 years.
5️⃣ Barren (बंजर) → Land uncultivated for 5 or more years.
✳️ Flow of Silver in the Economy (अर्थव्यवस्था में चाँदी का प्रवाह)
🔹 The Mughal Empire (भारत) was among the largest empires of Asia in the 16th–17th centuries, along with:
- Ming (China 🇨🇳)
- Safavid (Iran 🇮🇷)
- Ottoman (Turkey 🇹🇷)
🔹 Political stability of these empires boosted long-distance land trade from China → Mediterranean Sea 🌊.
🔹 Age of Exploration (नवीन विश्व की खोज) → expanded trade between Europe & Asia, especially India.
➡️ Many new goods entered India’s trade network.
🔹 Growing trade brought huge inflow of silver 💰 from Europe to Asia, mainly to pay for Indian exports.
🔹 This was beneficial for India because:
✅ India lacked natural silver resources
✅ Expansion in currency economy & coin circulation
✅ Mughals found it easier to collect cash taxes
