Peasants and their lands

Detail

What the peasant was called

• No single word. Indo-Persian sources of the 16th-17th centuries use raiyat (plural riaya) and muzarian for the peasant.
• Hindi-belt sources add kisan and asami.
• raiyat later became ryot in British records — the same word, just spelt the English way. So a Mughal raiyat and a colonial ryot are the same person in the documents. [2]
• Why it matters: the peasant paid the tax on the produce, and that tax was the main source of income for Mughal rulers. [2]

Two kinds of peasants — khud-kashta and pahi-kashta

• Khud-kashta — "self-cultivating".
• They lived in the village where their fields lay.

• They owned the land they tilled.

• Pahi-kashta — "outsider cultivator".

• They lived in one village but farmed in another, on a contract basis.

• Two reasons they moved:

  • By choice — another village offered better revenue terms (lower or softer tax demand). Moving was a way to bargain.
  • By force — famine or hunger at home pushed them out.

• Key exam point: pahi-kashta is a contractual arrangement, not ownership in that village.

Size of a peasant holding — very small

• The normal peasant was a smallholder. A typical family had rarely more than a pair of bullocks and two ploughs. That was the whole "machine park" of a farm.
• Most had less than even that.
• Regional numbers to memorise:

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

• So "rich peasant" in Mughal India meant 6-10 acres, not a big estate. The scale was tiny.

The land was private property

• Peasant land was individually owned, not held in common by the village.
• Proof: land was bought and sold just like any other property.
• Fields were clearly marked out on the ground with:
• raised earth ridges,
• brick borders,

• thorn fences.

• Sources speak of "thousands of such fields" inside a single village. This tells us plots were small, many and separately owned.

• Careful: private peasant ownership did not mean no tax. The state's revenue claim sat on top of it, and the peasant usually paid through zamindars — a Mughal umbrella term for all intermediaries, from the village headman to a powerful local chieftain. [2]

Why farming kept expanding

Three drivers worked together through the 16th-17th centuries:

• Abundant land — plenty of forest, scrub and waste still waiting to be cleared.
• Available labour — enough hands to clear and plough it.
• Peasant mobility — peasants could pick up and move. This is the crucial one.
• A peasant unhappy with the tax demand could walk away to a village offering better terms — that is the pahi-kashta route.
• The state and zamindars therefore had a reason to attract cultivators, not only squeeze them.
• Result: new land kept coming under the plough.

How the state measured what the peasant grew (background)

• Under Akbar the zabt system was used, mainly in north India: measure the land in bighas, classify the crop, estimate the price, then fix 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, surveyed crop yields, prices and cultivated area over a 10-year period to set these rates. [2]
• Point of the system: replace arbitrary, on-the-spot levies with fixed rates — meant to shield the peasant from excess demand and the state from loss. [2]
• The record of all this is the Ain-i-Akbari, compiled by Abul Fazl; its volumes are held and digitised as rare books by Indian Culture (Ministry of Culture). [4]

Prelims Hooks

• raiyat (pl. riaya) and muzarian = Persian terms for peasant; kisan, asami = Hindi-belt terms.
• ryot in British records = the same word as Mughal raiyat. [2]
• Khud-kashta = resident cultivator of own village land; pahi-kashta = non-resident cultivator working on contract in another village.
• Pahi-kashta moved for two reasons: choice (better revenue terms) or compulsion (famine).
• Typical peasant equipment: a pair of bullocks and two ploughs — rarely more.
• Gujarat: ~6 acres = affluent peasant.
• Bengal: 5 acres = average ceiling; 10 acres = rich asami.
• Peasant land was bought and sold — individual, not communal, ownership.
• Field boundaries marked by raised earth, brick or thorn; "thousands of such fields" per village.
• Three drivers of agricultural expansion: abundant land, available labour, peasant mobility.
• Zabt = measure land in bighas + classify crop + fix cash rate, roughly one-third of average produce. [3]
• Todar Mal used a 10-year survey of yields, prices and area. [2]

Mains Points

• Mobility was the peasant's bargaining chip. Because land was plentiful and labour scarce relative to it, a peasant could leave for better terms. This limited how hard zamindars and the state could squeeze, and it explains the steady clearing of new land — a useful counter to the picture of a wholly helpless Mughal peasantry.
• Private ownership plus heavy state claim can coexist. Peasants bought and sold their fields, yet the state took roughly a third of the produce as cash under zabt [3] and collection ran through zamindars [2]. Use this to argue that the Mughal village was neither a self-sufficient commune nor a state farm.
• Smallholding was the structural base of the economy. With 5-10 acres marking the top of the range, agrarian surplus came from many tiny units, not large farms — which shaped how revenue had to be assessed (village-level measurement, crop classification, cash rates) and why a detailed record like the Ain-i-Akbari was needed. [4]
• Continuity into colonial rule. The same raiyat/ryot and the same zamindar intermediaries were inherited by the British [2], so the Permanent Settlement and ryotwari debates begin from Mughal categories, not from a blank slate.