The Administration of the Sultanate of Dehli c11.148

c11.148

Sometimes the headmen undertook to pay a fixed amount on behalf of the village, and thus they acted as tax-farmers. Very different from such headmen was the tax-farmer who undertook to pay the state a fixed sum of money for a considerable area.¹ There can be little doubt that this method was open to abuse and often resulted in loss to the state and hardship to the cultivator. There were various kinds of tax-farmers. The village headman might act as a tax-farmer by undertaking to pay a fixed amount to the state on behalf of the peasant. This sum would naturally be based on local records and neither the state nor the peasants could be great losers, for, in lieu of the risks involved, the headman would get a favourable figure and the state would be saved from the bother of assessment and collection. Sometimes it might be a good policy to make the governor of a province responsible for the collection of the revenue and come to terms with him regarding the sum of money which he was to pay. In efficient and conscientious hands, this arrangement might lead to a unified control of the administrative machinery and produce better results. The tributary chiefs were tax-farmers in a sense, for they paid only a fixed tribute. They were permanent; they had local ties and their claims were based on immemorial custom. The worst tax-farmer was the speculator whose one idea was to make money and who had no scruples about robbing the state or oppressing the peasant. The system of farming dates back to Hindu times and was known to Muslims as well before they came to India.² During the earlier days of the sultanate, when the rulers did not know much of local conditions, this system must have found favour, though it is not possible to estimate its extent. ‘Alā-u’d-dīn Khaljī, who even objected to assignments, was not likely to encourage farming, but the system seems to have grown under his successors. Ghiyāth-u'd-dīn Tughluq took stringent measures against it, and the historian's language shows this was a great reform.¹ Muhammad bin Tughluq's financial difficulties led to a recrudescence of the system; under him we see the system at its worst. Speculative farmers of no substance offered high prices which they could not pay, and being afraid of the sultan's chastisement rebelled. Of course, the state was not able to recover anything.² Fīrūz, in his turn, suppressed tax-farming; but it seems to have revived in certain parts of the sultanate after Tīmūr's invasion, though the growth of assignments in that period did not favour extensive farming.³ Sher Shāh's efficiency did not brook farmers.⁴