History · Ch 8 — Peasants, Zamindars and the State — Agrarian Society and the Mughal Empire
Peasants and their lands
Peasants and their lands
The Mughal administrative records, written in Indo-Persian, most commonly refer to a peasant as raiyat (plural riaya) or muzarian. You will also find the terms kisan or asami used in these sources. These words all point to the same person: the cultivator of the land.
Two kinds of peasants
Seventeenth-century sources make a clear distinction between two types of peasants based on where they lived and worked.
- Khud-kashta: These were resident cultivators. They lived in the very village where they held and farmed their land. They were the settled, local peasantry.
- Pahi-kashta: These were non-resident cultivators. They belonged to one village but cultivated land in another village on a contractual basis.
Why would a peasant become a pahi-kashta? The sources mention two broad reasons — choice and compulsion.
A peasant might choose to become pahi-kashta if the revenue terms in a distant village were more favourable. Alternatively, he might be compelled by economic distress, such as after a famine, to leave his home village and seek land elsewhere.
Landholding and wealth
The average peasant in north India was not wealthy. Most possessed no more than a pair of bullocks and two ploughs; many had even less. The size of landholdings varied by region, and the sources give us specific benchmarks.
| Region | Measure of Affluence |
|---|---|
| Gujarat | A peasant with about six acres of land was considered affluent. |
| Bengal | The upper limit for an average peasant farm was five acres. A holding of ten acres would make one a rich asami. |
Ownership and sale of land
Cultivation in Mughal India was based on the principle of individual ownership. This is a critical point: peasant lands were bought and sold just like the lands of any other property owner. Land was a commodity that could be transferred. …