Khud-kashta

Topic: Mughal Agrarian Society and Economy · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 4 "Peasants, Zamindars and the State"

Meaning

Khud-kashta ("self-cultivating") were peasants in Mughal India who lived in the same village where their fields lay and who held and tilled that land themselves. The term matters because the Mughal state got most of its income from the tax on the peasant's produce [2]. Khud-kashta were the settled, stable cultivators in this system, and the exam often pairs them with the outsider pahi-kashta.

Explanation

Background: who the peasant was

• The sources had no single word for a peasant:
• Indo-Persian sources of the 16th–17th centuries use raiyat (plural riaya) and muzarian.

• Sources from the Hindi-speaking region use kisan and asami.

• raiyat later became ryot in British records. It is the same word, spelt the English way [2].

• The peasant paid the tax on the produce. That tax was the main source of income for Mughal rulers [2].
• According to NCERT, seventeenth-century sources split peasants into two kinds: khud-kashta and pahi-kashta.

Main features of a khud-kashta

• Resident. They lived in the village where their fields lay.
• Holders of their own land. They tilled land that was theirs in that village. They were not working on contract.
• Private property. Peasant land was individually owned, not held in common by the village.
• Land was bought and sold like any other property.
• Fields were marked out with raised earth ridges, brick borders or thorn fences.

• Sources speak of "thousands of such fields" in one village, so plots were small, numerous and separately owned.

• Small holdings. A typical peasant family had rarely more than a pair of bullocks and two ploughs, and most had less.

Region	Holding size	Meaning
Gujarat	about 6 acres	counted as affluent (rich)
Bengal	5 acres	the average ceiling for a normal peasant
Bengal	10 acres	a rich asami

How it worked within the revenue system

• Owning land did not free the peasant from tax. The state's revenue claim sat on top of that ownership.
• The peasant usually paid through zamindars. This was a Mughal umbrella term for all intermediaries (people standing between the state and the peasant), from the village headman to a powerful local chief [2].
• Under Akbar the zabt system was used, mainly in north India. Officials measured the land in bighas (a local unit of land area), classified the crop, estimated its price and fixed a cash revenue rate [3].
• The demand was commonly about one-third of the average produce, turned into a cash figure [3].
• Todar Mal, Akbar's revenue minister, studied crop yields, prices and the area under cultivation over a 10-year period to set these rates [2].

Results: the khud-kashta and peasant mobility

• The khud-kashta was the stable base. The pahi-kashta was the mobile edge.
• A peasant unhappy with the tax demand could leave and farm in another village on contract. That made him a pahi-kashta.
• This threat of leaving gave every peasant, including the khud-kashta, some bargaining power.

• The state and zamindars therefore had a reason to attract and keep cultivators, not only squeeze them.

• Abundant land, available labour and peasant mobility together kept new land coming under the plough through the 16th–17th centuries.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: Mughal India, 16th–17th centuries. NCERT links the khud-kashta/pahi-kashta distinction to seventeenth-century sources.
• Ruler and officials: Akbar's reign is the main reference point for the revenue system. Todar Mal was the revenue minister who set the rates [2].
• Region: Village India across the empire. The holding-size evidence comes from Gujarat and Bengal, and the zabt system worked mainly in north India [3].
• Evidence:
• Indo-Persian texts of the 16th–17th centuries, which use the terms raiyat and muzarian.
• The Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl, the main record of Akbar's revenue system. Indian Culture (Ministry of Culture) holds and digitises its volumes as rare books [4].
• Revenue records that were later carried into British documents, where raiyat became ryot [2].

Don't confuse with

• Pahi-kashta: these were non-resident cultivators. They lived in one village and farmed in another on a contract basis, either by choice (better revenue terms) or by force (famine). The khud-kashta lived in their own village and held the land there.
• Zamindar: an intermediary who collected revenue from peasants, ranging from a village headman to a local chief [2]. The khud-kashta was the cultivator who paid. He was not the collector.
• Ryot (British records): this is the same word as Mughal raiyat, meaning any peasant [2]. Khud-kashta is a narrower term for one kind of raiyat, the resident one.
• Asami: a Hindi-belt word for a peasant in general (for example, a "rich asami" in Bengal held 10 acres). It does not tell you whether the peasant was resident or outsider.

Prelims Hooks

• Khud-kashta = resident peasant tilling his own land in his own village. Pahi-kashta = non-resident peasant farming another village's land on contract.
• Pahi-kashta moved for two reasons: choice (better revenue terms) or compulsion (famine). Trap: the khud-kashta did not move.
• Persian terms for peasant: raiyat (pl. riaya) and muzarian. Hindi-belt terms: kisan and asami. Ryot = raiyat [2].
• Holding sizes: Gujarat ~6 acres = affluent. Bengal 5 acres = average ceiling, 10 acres = rich asami.
• Peasant land was bought and sold, so ownership was individual, not communal. Fields were marked by earth, brick or thorn boundaries.
• Zabt = land measured in bighas + crop classified + cash rate of about one-third of average produce [3]. Todar Mal used a 10-year survey [2].

Mains Points

• Private ownership and a heavy state claim existed side by side.
• The khud-kashta held and could sell his fields.
• Yet the state took about a third of the produce in cash under zabt [3], collected through zamindars [2].

• So the Mughal village was neither a self-sufficient commune nor a state-owned farm.

• The pahi-kashta option limited how hard the khud-kashta could be squeezed.

• Land was plentiful, and a peasant who was taxed too hard could leave for better terms elsewhere.
• This checked over-taxation and helps explain why farming kept expanding.

• It also challenges the picture of a completely helpless Mughal peasantry.

• Continuity into colonial rule.

• The British inherited the same raiyat/ryot and the same zamindar intermediaries [2].
• So later colonial debates over whether to settle revenue with the zamindar or directly with the ryot started from Mughal categories like the resident, land-holding khud-kashta.

Related concepts

• Ryot
• Pahi-kashta

Read more

• Peasants and their lands