Peasants and Agricultural Production

The basic unit of agricultural society under the Mughals was the village. Peasants living there performed the full cycle of seasonal tasks: tilling the soil, sowing seeds, and harvesting ripe crops. Beyond growing food, they also contributed labour to produce agro-based goods like sugar and oil.

But rural India was not uniform. Large tracts of dry land, hilly regions, and substantial forest areas could not be cultivated in the same way as fertile expanses. Keeping this varied topography in mind is essential when discussing agrarian society.

1.1 Looking for sources

Peasants themselves did not write about their lives, so our understanding of rural society comes from other sources. The most important is the Ain-i Akbari (often called the Ain), written by Akbar’s court historian Abu’l Fazl. This chronicle meticulously recorded state arrangements for ensuring cultivation, collecting revenue, and regulating the relationship between the state and rural magnates (zamindars). The Ain’s central purpose was to present a vision of Akbar’s empire where a strong ruling class ensured social harmony. In its view, any revolt against the Mughal state was predestined to fail. So whatever we learn from the Ain about peasants is a view from the top.

Fortunately, this account can be supplemented by regional sources. Detailed revenue records from Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and the extensive records of the East India Company provide useful descriptions of agrarian relations in eastern India. These sources record conflicts between peasants, zamindars, and the state, giving us insight into peasants’ perceptions and their expectations of fairness from the state.

1.2 Peasants and their lands

The most common term for a peasant in Indo-Persian sources was raiyat (plural riaya) or muzarian. The terms kisan or asami are also encountered.

Seventeenth-century sources refer to two kinds of peasants:

• Khud-kashta: Residents of the village in which they held their lands.
• Pahi-kashta: Non-resident cultivators who belonged to another village but cultivated lands elsewhere on a contractual basis. People became pahi-kashta either out of choice (better revenue terms in a distant village) or out of compulsion (economic distress after a famine).

The average peasant in north India seldom possessed more than a pair of bullocks and two ploughs; most possessed even less. In Gujarat, peasants with about six acres of land were considered affluent. In Bengal, five acres was the upper limit of an average peasant farm; ten acres would make one a rich asami.

Cultivation was based on the principle of individual ownership. Peasant lands were bought and sold like the lands of other property owners. A nineteenth-century description of peasant holdings in the Delhi-Agra region (which would apply equally to the seventeenth century) notes that cultivating peasants marked the limits of each field with borders of raised earth, brick, and thorn, so that thousands of such fields could be counted in a village.

1.3 Irrigation and technology

Three factors accounted for the constant expansion of agriculture: abundance of land, available labour, and the mobility of peasants.

The primary purpose of agriculture was to feed people, so basic staples like rice, wheat, or millets were the most frequently cultivated crops. Areas receiving 40 inches or more of rainfall a year were generally rice-producing zones, followed by wheat and millets in a descending scale of precipitation. Monsoons remained the backbone of Indian agriculture.

But some crops required additional water, so artificial irrigation systems were devised. Babur, the first Mughal emperor, noted in his memoirs (Babur Nama) that in Hindustan, villages could be depopulated and set up in a moment. He observed that people did not need to dig water courses because their crops were all rain-grown. However, for young trees, water was made to flow by means of buckets or wheels.

Babur described two irrigation devices:

• The wheel (Persian wheel): In Lahore, Dipalpur, and those parts, people used a wheel. Two circles of rope were made, strips of wood fixed between them, and pitchers fastened on them. The ropes with wood and pitchers were put over the wheel-well. A bullock turned a second wheel whose teeth caught in the first, rotating the wheel with pitchers. Water emptied into a trough and was conveyed everywhere.
• The bucket: In Agra, Chandwar, Bayana, and those parts, people watered with a bucket. A fork of wood with a roller was set up at the well-edge. A rope tied to a large bucket was put over the roller, and its other end tied to a bullock. One person drove the bullock, another emptied the bucket.

Irrigation projects also received state support. In northern India, the state undertook digging of new canals (nahr, nala) and repaired old ones like the shahnahr in the Punjab during Shah Jahan’s reign.

Though agriculture was labour intensive, peasants used technologies that harnessed cattle energy. The wooden plough was light and easily assembled with an iron tip or coulter. It did not make deep furrows, which preserved moisture better during hot months. A drill pulled by a pair of giant oxen was used to plant seeds, but broadcasting of seed was the most prevalent method. Hoeing and weeding were done simultaneously using a narrow iron blade with a small wooden handle.

1.4 An abundance of crops

Agriculture was organised around two major seasonal cycles:

• Kharif (autumn)
• Rabi (spring)

Most regions, except the most arid or inhospitable, produced a minimum of two crops a year (do-fasla). Some, where rainfall or irrigation assured a continuous supply of water, even gave three crops. This ensured an enormous variety of produce. The Ain tells us that the Mughal province of Agra produced 39 varieties of crops and Delhi produced 43 over the two seasons. Bengal produced 50 varieties of rice alone.

However, agriculture was not only for subsistence. The term jins-i kamil (literally, perfect crops) appears in sources. The Mughal state encouraged peasants to cultivate such crops as they brought in more revenue. Cotton and sugarcane were jins-i kamil par excellence. Cotton was grown over a great swathe of territory in central India and the Deccan plateau, while Bengal was famous for its sugar. Cash crops also included various oilseeds (like mustard) and lentils. This shows how subsistence and commercial production were closely intertwined in an average peasant’s holding.

During the seventeenth century, several new crops reached the Indian subcontinent from different parts of the world:

• Maize (makka): Introduced via Africa and Spain; by the seventeenth century it was listed as a major crop of western India.
• Vegetables: Tomatoes, potatoes, and chillies were introduced from the New World.
• Fruits: Pineapple and papaya.

The spread of tobacco: This plant arrived first in the Deccan and spread to northern India in the early years of the seventeenth century. The Ain does not mention tobacco in its lists of crops in northern India. Akbar and his nobles came across tobacco for the first time in 1604. Smoking tobacco (in hookahs or chillums) caught on in a big way. Jahangir was so concerned about its addiction that he banned it, but this was totally ineffective. By the end of the seventeenth century, tobacco had become a major article of consumption, cultivation, and trade all over India.

Agricultural prosperity and population growth: One important outcome of such varied and flexible forms of agricultural production was a slow demographic growth. Despite periodic disruptions caused by famines and epidemics, India’s population increased by about 50 million people between 1600 and 1800 — an increase of about 33 per cent over 200 years.