An in-depth look at the social structure and land ownership in medieval India, covering Zamindari rights, armed forces' role, and social contributions.
Zamindars and the Rural Gentry
Land Ownership
Personal ownership of land was very old in India, as noted by Abul Fazl and other contemporary authors.
Land ownership depended mainly on heredity, but new rights were being created all the time.
The tradition was that anyone who brought land under cultivation was considered its owner.
There was plenty of cultivable wasteland (banjar) available in medieval times, making it easy for enterprising groups to settle new villages or cultivate wastelands and become landowners.
Zamindari Rights
In addition to owning the lands they cultivated, many zamindars had the hereditary right of collecting land revenue from a number of villages, called talluqa or zamindari.
The zamindars received a share of the land revenue, which could go up to 25% in some areas, for collecting the land revenue.
The zamindar was not the ‘owner’ of all the lands in his zamindari. The peasants who actually cultivated the land could not be dispossessed as long as they paid the land revenue.
Social Hierarchy
Above the zamindars were the rajas, who dominated larger or smaller tracts and enjoyed varied degrees of internal autonomy.
The rajas are also called zamindars by Persian writers to emphasize their subordinate status, but their position was superior to that of the zamindars who collected land revenue.
Medieval society, including rural society, was highly segmented or hierarchical.
Armed Forces and Living Standards
The zamindars, rajas, and chiefs had their own armed forces and generally lived in forts or garhis, which served as both places of refuge and status symbols.
The combined forces of these sections, called zamindars in medieval sources, were considerable, but they were dispersed and could never field large forces at one time or place.
The zamindars had close connections on a caste, clan, or tribal basis with the peasants settled in their zamindaris.
Role in Society
The zamindars formed a very numerous and powerful class found all over the country under different names such as deshmukh, patil, nayak, etc.
It was not easy for any central authority to ignore or alienate them.
The living standards of the zamindars varied. Compared to the nobles, their income was limited, and smaller ones may have lived more or less like the peasants. However, the larger zamindars' living standards might have approached those of petty rajas or nobles.
Economic and Social Contributions
Most of the zamindars apparently lived in the countryside and formed a kind of loose, dispersed local gentry.
Many of the zamindars had close caste and kinship ties with the land-owning cultivating castes in their zamindari. They not only set social standards but also provided capital and organization for settling new villages or extending and improving cultivation.
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