A History of Agriculture in India v2.c74.s9: Needy Peasants and Small Holdings
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c74.s9
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Needy Peasants and Small Holdings
v2.c74.s9.1
A question is often asked whether the agrarian system prevailing under Akbar's rule was *zamindari* or *ryatwari*. Moreland replies that it comprised both. There was a general recognition of the peasant's title to permanent and hereditary occupancy of the land he tilled. The inviolability of occupancy right of the peasants was recognized in regulations of Akbar. Akbar cautioned revenue officials against entering in their records 'peasant holdings' (*raiyat-kashta*) as 'personally cultivated lands' (*khud-kashta*) of *madad-i-maash* holders.
v2.c74.s9.2
The peasant's right to the permanent and hereditary occupancy of the land he tilled was saleable, though on occasion none might think it worth buying. The peasants could transmit their land to their heirs and could transfer it by sale or mortgage, but always subject to the condition that the revenue due was paid. But there was no question of really free alienation—the right to abandon or dispose of the land as its holders might choose—which is an essential feature of modern proprietary right. If in one sense the land belonged to the peasant, in another the peasant belonged to the land. He could not (unless, perhaps, he found a successor) leave it or refuse to cultivate it. The village officials bound themselves not to allow any cultivator to leave his place.
v2.c74.s9.3
The readiness with which the authorities recognized the peasant's right of occupancy and the anxiety they showed to prevent him from leaving the land were both natural in an age when land was abundant and peasants scarce. In Mughal times, the area of land under cultivation was in many regions probably only half, and in others two-thirds to three-quarters, of the area of such land in 1920. There were, therefore, always stretches of virgin land beckoning the peasant, while with his low level of subsistence and primitive huts he had no immovable possessions to tie him to his old place of habitation.
v2.c74.s9.4
The peasant of Mughal times enjoyed a right which in British India was conferred on some sections of the peasants in some provinces only by special tenancy legislation, viz. the permanent and hereditary right of occupancy. In certain circumstances this right could be considered proprietary in nature. But a proprietor must be a free agent and he must possess the right of free alienation. Since the peasant could not legally abandon his land, he was really a near-serf. If, therefore, the king was not the owner of the soil, neither was the peasant. This means in other words that in *raiyati* areas, at least, a single owner cannot be located. There were different rights over the land and its produce, and not one exclusive right of property.
v2.c74.s9.5
The position was different in the *zamindari* areas. There the *zamindars* sometimes possessed rights which were practically proprietary. ‘There existed almost throughout the Mughal Empire,’ states Irfan Habib, ‘a fiscal claim of the *zamindar* upon land lying within his *zamindari*, the claim being met either through a separate rate on the peasants or through the holding of a portion of the land revenue-free or a cash allowance from the revenue collected from the entire land by the authorities. In the last two forms, it was known by the names of *malikana* and *do-biswi* in northern India and Bengal, and as *banth* in Gujarat and *chauth* in the Dakhin.’