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The Mughal State, 1526-1750

Muzaffar Alam and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds)

Alam, Muzaffar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (eds);

The Mughal State, 1526-1750

Oxford University Press (Themes in Indian History), 1986, 548 pages

ISBN 0195652253

topics: |  india | history | medieval | mughal | anthology |

Excerpts

Tapan Raychaudhuri : Irfan Habib's The Agrarian System of Mughal India

Once in a very long while something happens to stir the shallow, turbid
and yet extensive waters of Indian historiography. The publication of
Irfan Habib's The Agrarian System of Mughal India is generally recognised
– even in the most unlikely quarters – as one of these rare occasions.

The detailed knowledge on which the volume is based would satisfy the
most rigorous demands of India's traditional scholarship: the
not-so-whispered accusation of glib generalisation, based on
ill-understood and inadequate data, often levelled against the Indian
protagonists of the analytical approach to history, would be quite
pointless in this particular case ... Habib's Agrarian System is the
first major product of [the] new Aligarh 'school' and marks a fresh point
of departure in Indian historiography. (1965) p. 259 [ch.8]


The traditional simplistic account of Indian peasantry


Our knowledge and understanding of Indian agrarian society in the
pre-colonial era, as derived from Moreland, Baden-Powell, Maine, etc.  on
the one hand and Marx and the Marxists on the other, are essentially
simplistic, which fact perhaps explains the striking and unexpected
similarity of views as between the British officials and the radical
thinkers mentioned above. The image generally projected is of an
undifferentiated mass of small peasants, held together in fraternal village
communities exercising by virtue of immemorial custom the communal right of
hereditary occupation over arable land and pasture, subject only to revenue
exploitation by the superior political-military authorities who expropriated
the surplus directly or through power delegated to intermediate levels of
authority.

In this pre-class society, private ownership of land had not emerged: the
concept was, in fact, irrelevant. For the situation, in Moreland's words,
was 'antecedent to the process of disentangling the concept of private
right from political allegiance'.  [India at the death of Akbar, p. 96-98]

In Marxist terms, the basic fact of communal property -- which was really
no property in the bourgeois sense -- was masked by oriental despotism
with 'the despotic government suspended over the small communities'.  To
repeat, property in land was irrelevant in these circumstances wherein
cultivation was not a right but an enforceable duty.

The 'self-sustaining unity of manufacture and agriculture' containing 'all
the conditions for reproduction and surplus production' within the village
community explains the economic viability and self-perpetuating character
of this elementary form of social organization which could resist
disintegration as much as evolution.  Within this essentially changeless
system, superficial mutations occurred through the aggregation of small
states into empires, entailing changes in assessment and collection and in
the composition of the exploiting class.  These did not however affect
either the organization or the relations of production. The sharers in the
expropriated surplus might be of diverse origin, but they were identical
in their economic functions and foundations. [see Marx, pre-Capitalist
Economic Formations, esp Hobsbawm's introduction]

In so far as the only mentionable changes in agrarian society concerned
this class, unconnected with production, the basic thesis of
changelessness is not affected.  At most, the variation in the degree and
manner of revenue extraction permitted a limited range of fluctuations in
output and the producers' share of it. But strictly limited; because most
of the time in most places the expropriation of the surplus was as near
total as was practicable.

Challenges to the Grand Theory

This simple abstract model has been repeatedly put forward as the standard
pattern of agrarian organization in Asia, and not by Marxists alone. Of
course, one knew there were local differences; but these differences were
considered to be either deviations from the norm or subsumed by the
fundamental uniformity of socio-economic organization throughout this vast
continent. In other words, the view that the local and regional variations
were not significant enough was established pretty firmly.

This image of the Oriental Society, with capital letters in appropriate
places, is reborn, Phoenix-like, from time to time, of course with a
seasonal change of feathers. Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism is perhaps
the latest -- but not the last, one apprehends -- formidable avatars of
this immortal bird. 261

Fortunately, over the last three decades or so, at a safe distance from
the grand theory, specialists on different regions of Asia have produced a
number of monographs which, when compared, bring out the striking
individuality of socio-economic organisations in different parts of Asia,
often within the same country. The abstract model of pre-class
ante-property village communities, based on self-sufficiency, with the
state in the role of an incubus, hardly fits any of these regional
patterns. Even as a tool of analysis it has lost much of its value, unless
one treats it as a starting hypothesis to be abandoned for the most part
by the time one has finished investigation. The works of Van Leur,
Schrieke and Meilink~Roelofsz on the Indonesian archipelago, of Doreen
Warriner on the Middle East, of Lambton on Persia have all done their bit
to demolish the image of a universal Oriental Society.

To this growing library of studies on Asian societies, Habib's work is a
very important addition. This detailed empirical study, though not free
from the natural limitations of a general survey covering the whole of
Mughal India and a wide time span, brings into focus the distinctive
traits of India's agrarian economy during a significant phase of the
pre-colonial era.

Peasants tied to their land

The new light thrown on the nature of land rights perhaps marks the most
significant point of departure from the traditional views sketched
above. [...]

[earlier ideas :
	* land ownership was an unknown idea
	* the king was the owner of all lands

contradictory ideas - but often held simultaneously]

Milkiyat (ownership, < mAlik) in agricultural land under the Mughals was
not, according to Habib, the same as 'ownership' as understood today. The
raiyat had no right to alienate his land freely. Cultivation as a right
was vested hereditarily in the peasant, but it was also an obligation from
which no peasant was exempt.

He was thus not a free agent: if the land belonged to him, he also belonged
to the land and hence was not very different in his rights and obligations
from the European serfs. Besides, his right of hereditary occupation was at
times interfered with in practice, if the land was lucrative enough to
attract new peasants whenever the old occupants were forced out. The most
striking proof of the peasants' subject status was the large-scale
abandonment of cultivation by raiyats who had no other means of
escaping an intolerable revenue burden.

[contrasts Habib's conclusions with instances of land sale cited by
B.R. Grover and Nurul Hasan, though Grover states that they were very rare.]

The landless

Our knowledge regarding the lowest strata of agrarian society -- the
people without any proprietary or tenancy rights in land -- is still very
inadequate. Habib has added some useful details to Moreland's statements
on agricultural labourers and 'village serfs' in India.  He mentions
cultivators who tilled other people's land, chamars who 'worked for
wages in the fields of cultivators and Zamindars', dhanuks who husked
rice and other groups who worked as guides and porters.

The assumption that the 'landless' were not numerous is not consistent with
another possibility, viz. that the bulk of the untouchables, a significant
proportion of Hindu society, were excluded from occupancy rights. The
phenomenon, somewhat puzzling in the context of a very favourable land-man
ratio, is explained in terms of the rigid caste system, the rigidity in its
turn being ascribed to hereditary division of labour necessitated by rural
isolation and self-sufficiency.12 But isolation and self-sufficiency of
villages have not generated such immobility in other societies, to wit, in
those of medieval Europe. Inadequacy of capital supply-Habib mentions how
large sections of the peasantry depended 'wholly upon credit for their
ability (to cultivate)' -- partly explain the origin of this c1ass.[Habib
p.120] One may however, have to fa11 back on social anthropology for a more
satisfactory explanation.

Sources of inequity

the size of one's holding and one's status in the rural hierarchy were not
evenly correlated. There must have been other sources of inequality
besides the perquisite of village officials. A minority of well-to-do
peasants has been a characteristic feature of many agrarian societies in
the pre-capitalist era. We have inter alia the notable example of the
Russian serfs who were allowed to trade and became millionaires.24 Growth
of the market for agricultural products may have favoured the enterprising
and the fortunate and colonizing efforts further aggravated the
inequalities.  And during the unsettled years the progress from wealth to
ownership and hence the suppression of communal rights were perhaps
a natural process. Yet these are but surmises and we are still nowhere
near the history of the Indian village communities and do not even
know where, when or in what forms the institution actually existed.

[also discusses deviations in the view of communal resources]
Habib: there is not 'the slightest suggestion anywhere in our sources'
	that the occupancy or proprietary right was ever held in common or
	land distributed periodically; the village community developed only
	in 'some spheres outside that of production.' 264

But in the 19th c., British officials do describe communal ownership and
periodic redistribution. [So is this a later growth in the anarchic
periods of 18th c.?  Or did it exist but are hard to find in the sources
consulted so far?]
[TR is impressive in his comparison of practices on communal land across
many other cultures in Asia].

Exploitation under jagir system


Without any long-term interest in the territory assigned to him for a
short period, the jagirdar unhesitatingly fleeced the peasant. Complaints
to the higher authorities, permitted in theory, were nearly impossible in
practice and were at best ineffective. The system of fanning out jagirs,
discouraged by the government, apparently to little purpose, further
aggravated the situation. The financial crisis of the Mughal empire, in
the later years of Aurangzeb and afterwards, with too many mansabdars and
not enough jagirs to go around led to a steady deterioration all round:

N.A. Siddiqi in his thesis has described the gradual impoverishment and exit
of the big jagirdar, replaced by a class of men who bought from the jagirdar
or otherwise secured the right to collect revenue over parts of the
erstwhile big jagirs, a right which eventually became hereditary in many
instances.  [habib p.270; Noman Ahmad Siddiqi phd]

The zamindar-taluqdaar hierarchy


The erstwhile political authority undertook to pay peshkash (tribute),
or became a mansabdar of the empire holding his territory as
watan jagir, not necessarily coterminous with his ancestral lands. The
zamindari status of the 'intermediary zamindar', however hoary its
antiquity, was derived, under the Mughals, from imperial sanads formally
conferring the 'office'. Under the sanad, the zamindar became a
malguzar, an official responsible for the collection of revenue from the
land under his control, almost invariably more extensive than his
ancestral holding.

From this point there are movements in two different directions. The
zamindar might become a sadr zamindar with jurisdiction over numerous
parganas or (outside Bengal) a taluqdaar with superior rights over smaller
zamindars who paid their revenue through him. Still a cog, however big, in
the wheel of the revenue administration, the taaluqdar before long
consolidated his rights in the nature of perquisites and eventually laid
claim to proprietorship over the territories under his control.

Secondly, the zamindari rights might suffer a dilution or diminution as well
generating in the process other forms of control over land. The Bengal
taaluqdars -- both independent (i.e. huzuri, paying revenue directly to
the state) and dependent (i.e.  muskuri, paying revenue through some
zamindar) -- secured rights essentially similar to that of the zamindars
through colonization, purchase or gift and thus emerged as a distinct level
of intermediaries.  The frequent sales and partitions of the zamindari and
taaluqdari lands often reduced the individual holding to a size which forced
the individual zamindars to become, once more, a khudkashta ryot, paying
revenue through the real or putative head of the family, now a chief
zamindar.

Kesavan Veluthat review of Habib (Frontline)

http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2821/stories/20111021282107500.htm
As a sequel to this inquiry, Habib came out with a major conclusion that
India did not, despite the necessary resources and conditions, have the
potentialities of capitalist development as the surplus that was produced
and extracted was not invested for the production of further
wealth. Although, strictly speaking, this is a counterfactual and there
could be alternative routes, the strict adherence to both the methods of
scientific inquiry and of historical materialism makes this a seminal
essay in Indian historiography.

=Contents==

General Editor's Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	 xi
Introduction
	Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam	 1

Part 1: The Formulation and Consolidation of Authority


1.	A warlord's fresh attempt at empire
	D.H.A. Kolff	 75
		[from Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy, 1990, pp. 32-70.]

2.	The Turko-Mongol Theory of Kingship
	Ram Prasad Tripathi	 115
		[from Some Aspects of Muslim Administration, 1959, pp. 105-21]

3.	The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir
	J.F. Richards	 126
		[from Richards (ed.), Kingship and Authority in South Asia,
			1978. ]

4.	Some Notes on Rajput Loyalties during the Mughal period
	Norman P. Ziegler	 168
		[from Richards (ed.), Kingship and Authority, 1978. ]

Part 2: Fiscal Organization and Social Structure


5.	Rank (mansab) in the Mogul State Service
	W.H. Moreland	 213
		[J. Royal Asiatic Society of GB & I, 1936, pp. 641-65]

6.	The Faujdar and Faujdari Under the Mughals
	Noman Ahmad Siddiqi 234
		[Medieval India Quarterly, Vol 4, 1961, pp. 22-35]

7.	Distribution of the Revenue Resources of the Mughal
		Empire among the nobility
	A. Jan Qaisar	 252
		[Proc. Indian History Congress, 1965, pp. 237-42]

8.	The Agrarian System of Mughal India: A Review essay
	Tapan Raychaudhuri	 259
		[Enquiry, New Series, Vol II(1), 1965, pp. 92-121]

9.	Zamindars under the Mughals
	S. Nurul Hasan	 284
		[from Frykenberg (ed.), Land Control and Social Structure in
		Indian History, 1969, pp. 17-31]

Part 3: Politics, Trade and Transformation


10.	The Condition of the people in Aurangzib's Reign
	Jadunath Sarkar	 301
		[History of Aurangzeb, Vol.4, 1924, pp. 436-72]

11.	Lower-class uprisings in the Mughal empire
	Wilfred Cantwell Smith	 323
		[from Islamic Culture, Vol XX, 1946, pp. 21-40]

12.	Review of the Crisis of the Jagirdari System
	Satish Chandra	 347
		[from Medieval India: Society, the Jagirdari Crisis and the
		Village, Delhi, 1982, pp. 61-75]

13.	Trade and Politics in eighteenth century India
	Ashin Das Gupta	 361
		[from D.S. Richards (ed.), Islam and the Trade of Asia, 1970,
		pp. 181-214.]

14.	The 'Great Firm' Theory of the Decline of the Mughal empire
	Karen Leonard	 398
		[from Comparative Studies in Society and History, v.XXI (2),
		1979, pp. 151-67]

Part 4: Regions and Realms of Resistance


15.	Conformity and Conflict: Tribes and the 'Agrarian System'
		of Mughal India
	Chetan Singh	 421
		[Indian Economic and Social History Review,
		Vol XXIII, (3), 1988, pp. 319-40]

16.	Aspects of Agrarian Uprisings in North India in the Early
		eighteenth century
	Muzaffar Alam	 449
		[Bhattacharya/Thapar (eds.), Situating Indian History, 1986,
		pp. 146-70.]

17.	Two frontier uprisings in Mughal India
	Gautam Bhadra	 474
		[from Ranajit Guha, (ed.), Subaltern Studies, Vol II,
		1982, pp. 43-59]

18.	Banditry in Mughal India: Historical and Folk perceptions
	J.F. Richards and V. Narayana Rao	 491
		[The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol XVII(1),
		1980, pp. 95-120]

Bibliography 520


This volume would have been richer if Professor M. Athar Ali, lrfan
Habib and Iqtidar Alam Khan had granted permission to reproduce
their essays.

---from the blurb:
I believe that this book would certainly compel the students of Mughal
history to reconsider issues, consolidate new research and move beyond the
paradigms of W.H. Moreland and Blochmann.' -Meena Bhargava in The Book Review

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This review by Amit Mukerjee was last updated on : 2015 Aug 20