A History of Agriculture in India v2.c85.s6: Wretched Condition of Peasants
A History of Agriculture in India v2.c85.s6
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Wretched Condition of Peasants
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As regards the peasantry and their condition, we have reliable evidence in the observations of the European travellers who travelled in India in the seventeenth century. Peter Mundy tells us that the peasants near Agra were treated 'as Turks treat Christians', 'taking from them all they can get by their labour, leaving them nothing but their bad, mud-walled, ill-thatched houses and a few cattle to till the ground, besides other miseries.'
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Pelsaert, who was in Agra during the rule of Jahangir, observed: 'The land would give a plentiful, or even an extraordinary, yield if the peasants were not so cruelly and pitilessly oppressed; for villages which, owing to some small shortage of produce, are unable to pay the full amount of the revenue-farm, are made prize, so to speak, by their masters or governors, and wives and children sold on the pretext of a charge of rebellion. Some peasants abscond to escape their tyranny, and take refuge with rajas who are in rebellion, and consequently the fields lie empty and unsown, and grow into wildernesses. Such oppression is exceedingly prevalent in this country.'²
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² Bernier, F. *Travels in the Mughal Empire*, p. 205
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Bernier, commenting on the state of the northern part of the country, its agriculture and peasantry, states: 'Of the vast tracts of country constituting the empire of Hindustan, many are little more than sand, or barren mountains, badly cultivated, and thinly peopled; and even a considerable portion of the good land remains untilled from want of labourers, many of whom perish in consequence of the bad treatment they experience from the Governors. These poor people, when incapable of discharging the demands of their rapacious lords, are not only often deprived of the means of subsistence, but are bereft of their children, who are carried away as slaves. Thus it happens that many of the peasantry, driven to despair by so execrable a tyranny, abandon the country and seek a more tolerable mode of existence, either in the towns or camps, as bearers of burdens, carriers of water, or servants to horsemen. Sometimes, they fly to the territories of a Raja, because there they find less oppression, and are allowed a greater degree of comfort.'³
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Jeane-Baptiste Tavernier, a French jeweller and merchant, visited India six times, between the years 1638 and 1688. He corroborates the account given by Bernier. He states: 'The peasants have for their sole garment a scrap of cloth to cover those parts which natural modesty requires should be concealed; and that they are reduced to great poverty, because if the Governors become aware that they possess any property they seize it straightaway by right or by force. You may see in India whole provinces like deserts from whence the peasants have fled on account of the oppression of the Governors.'⁴
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⁴ Tavernier, J.B. *Travels in India*, p. 392
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The flight of peasants from the land intensified during the reign of Aurangzeb. With the decrease in the number of peasants, the income of the assignees, the jagirdars, was reduced. The jagirdars, to make good their loss, put increased pressure on the working peasants. Moreover, the practice developed of selling governments of provinces for immense sums in hard cash. Hence, it naturally became the principal object of the individual thus appointed Governor, to obtain repayment of the purchase-money, which he had borrowed at a ruinous rate of interest. This in turn resulted in more repression on the cultivators.
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Due to uncertainty created among jagirdars owing to the constant and unpredictable transfers of jagirs, the agents of the jagirdars had given up the practice of helping the peasantry of making firm arrangements, states Bhimsen. 'Moreover, the amils of the jagirdars were not sure of their own tenures of employment and so "proceeding tyrannically" were unrelenting in the collection of revenue. When the *jagirdar*, instead of appointing his own agents to collect the revenue, farmed out the *jagir*, the evil was worse still. The land was being laid waste, says Sadiq Khan, writing of Shahjahan's reign, through bribery and revenue-farming, as a result of which the peasantry was being robbed and plundered.⁵
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⁵ Irfan Habib. *The Agrarian System of Mughal India*, p. 321
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To sum up, the Mughal system of Government and the Mughal society was predatory. There were lots of little fleas with lesser fleas on their backs to bite them. The English ambassador at the court of Jahangir's, Sir Thomas Roe, aptly observed, 'The people of India live as fishes do in the sea—the great ones eat up the little. For first the farmer robs the peasant, the gentleman robs the farmer, the greater robs the lesser, and the King robs all.' By the term farmer, he means the *jagirdars*, and his gentlemen were *omrahs* and *mansabdars*. The upper classes, the *omrahs*, *mansabdars* and *jagirdars* spent their incomes on objects of luxury and display. They did not invest money on improvement of land or on welfare of the peasantry and as a result the misery of the peasantry deepened, and their burden became insufferable in the reign of Aurangzeb and his successors.