The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c11.s3.9

c11.s3.9

Of all the ideas, motivations and actions mentioned above leading to the impoverishment of the peasantry, the one of leaving nothing but bare subsistence, was the most atrocious. Writing about the times of Aurangzeb, Dr. Tara Chand rightly observes that the policy (of leaving) bare subsistence was suicidal for it killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. It left no incentive for increasing the production or improving the methods of cultivation.⁶¹ Consequently, there was a progressive deterioration in the living standards of the peasantry as decades and centuries passed. As said earlier, Alberuni, Barani, Ibn Battuta and Shams Siraj Afif talk about the prosperity of the people right up to the fourteenth century. R.H. Major in his translation of the works of Nicolo Conti, Athnasius Nikitin, Santo Stefano etc.,⁶² only refers to the poverty of the Indian peasant in the fifteenth century. But Babur in the sixteenth century witnessed extreme poverty; he repeatedly talks about *langoti* as the only apparel and *khichri* as the only food.⁶³ Witnesses for the seventeenth century are unanimous in observing extreme poverty of the peasantry.