Question

Examine the condition of zamindars in Mughal agrarian society.

Answer 1

1. The zamindars who were landed proprietors who also enjoyed certain social and economic privileges by virtue of their superior status in rural society.
2. Caste was one factor that accounted for the elevated status of zamindars, another factor was that they performed certain services (khidmat) for the state.
3. The zamindars held extensive personal lands termed milkiyat, meaning property. Milkiyat lands were cultivated for the private use of zamindars, often with the help of hired or servile labour.
4. The zamindars could sell, bequeath, or mortgage these lands at will. Zamindars also derived their power from the fact that they could often collect revenue on behalf of the state, a service for which they were compensated financially. Control over military resources was another source of power. Most zamindars had fortresses (qilachas) as well as an armed contingent comprising units of cavalry, artillery, and infantry.
5. If we visualise social relations in the Mughal countryside as a pyramid, zamindars clearly constituted its very narrow apex. Abu’l Fazl’s account indicates that an “upper-caste”, Brahmana-Rajput combine had already established firm control over rural society. It also reflects a fairly large representation from the so-called intermediate castes, as well as a liberal sprinkling of Muslim zamindaris.
6. Contemporary documents give the impression that conquest may have been the source of the origin of some zamindaris. The dispossession of weaker people by a powerful military chieftain was quite often a way of expanding a zamindari.
7. It is, however, unlikely that the state would have allowed such a show of aggression by a zamindar unless he had been confirmed by an imperial order (sanad).
8. More important were the slow processes of zamindari consolidation, which are also documented in sources. This involved colonisation of new lands, by transfer of rights, by order of the state and by purchase. These were the processes which perhaps permitted people belonging to the relatively “lower” castes to enter the rank of zamindars as zamindaris were bought and sold quite briskly in this period.