Mughal Administration c9.s2: § 2. The peasant ever in arrears of payment.
Mughal Administration c9.s2
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§ 2. The peasant ever in arrears of payment.
c9.s2.1
Hence, the collection of the revenue was always the result of a struggle between the ryot and the sarkār, and the arrears were seldom, if ever, cleared. The next logical step in this vicious circle was for the Government collectors to exact from the ryot, under the name of the never-to-be-extinguished arrears, everything except his bare subsistence. In most parts of Mughal India the ryot was, therefore, in the same condition as the French peasantry in the reign of Louis XV, trying to escape the unjust taille, or the cottier tenants of Ireland perpetually in debt to their landlords.
c9.s2.2
There was this difference, however, that in pre-British times there was no eviction for default, no starvation of the peasantry (except when there was a local famine, with no communication with the more fruitful parts of the country). In the early and mediæval times, the peasant was left in his holding and left with enough to feed him (except when the entire harvest failed). The old custom of payment by the division of the crop* (the batāi system) was an advantage to him, as the payment depended on the actual harvest of the year, unlike the modern money rent which is an amount fixed irrespective of the yield in different years. In those days of constant war and disorder, the peasant was also cherished and valued because his landlord had need of him as an armed retainer. Indeed, competition for tenants among the zamindars was the rule and the poorer peasants sometimes escaped from one zamindari to another in the hope of getting rid of their arrears with the former and of faring better under a new landlord. Cases of such fugitive ryots were very frequent in North Bengal only sixty years ago.