Condition of Peasants in the 16th and 17th Centuries

Condition of Peasants in the 16th and 17th Centuries

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India has long been a land of villages. Even today, the bulk of its population resides in rural areas — and this was truer still of those historical periods when industrial production remained small, never extending much beyond a handful of scattered artisan and handicraft industries, and agriculture remained the principal vocation for the overwhelming majority of the population.

The social structure inherited from the Sultanate period continued to operate under Mughal rule, displaying both continuity and change. The most significant developments during this transition included:

• Further stratification of rural society.
• The growth of urbanisation, and of the class of artisans and master-artisans.
• The emergence of a composite ruling class, accompanied by growing bureaucratisation and commercialisation.
• The expansion of middle segments of rural and urban society.
• The further growth and strengthening of the commercial classes.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, roughly 85 per cent of India’s population lived in rural areas. Yet, curiously, contemporary historical sources — including the accounts of the numerous foreign travellers who visited India during this period — offer us remarkably little direct description of rural life itself. This gap has been partially filled by the substantial body of surviving documentation on land revenue and rural affairs from the various states of Rajasthan, by Marathi records of the 18th century, and by Mughal documents relating primarily to the Deccan. Literary sources, too, provide useful supplementary insight into rural conditions.

A defining feature of rural society across the country — tribal areas aside — was its highly stratified nature. People were divided and grouped according to their residential status, caste, and position as office-holders. While considerable differences in material wealth certainly existed, material status alone was not the primary determinant of a person’s standing within rural society. Understanding this study of the condition of peasants in the 16th and 17th centuries offers crucial insight into the agrarian foundations on which the entire Mughal economy and polity rested.

Structure of Rural Society

The basic unit of rural society in India was the village, which possessed two principal physical features: a group of resident families and their dwellings, and the cultivated land surrounding them.

Peasants

Peasants formed the single most important segment of the rural population — it was upon their productive labour that the survival of all other rural (and, indeed, non-rural) classes ultimately depended.

• Peasants themselves were far from a homogeneous group, being sharply divided by inequalities of wealth and social status:
  • There existed both rich peasants (variously termed khud-kasht, gharuhala, and mirasdar) and poor peasants (rezariaya, malti, and kunbi).
  • There were also permanent residents (mirasdar, thalkar) as distinct from temporary residents (paikasht, upari).
• Caste associations and kinship ties (bhaichara) further contributed to the internal divisions within the peasantry.

Resident Cultivators: Riyayatis and Khud-Kasht

The largest single section within any village consisted of cultivators, the overwhelming majority of whom claimed descent from the village’s original settlers. This body of resident cultivators was typically divided into two broad groups: the privileged riyayati (or khud-kasht), and the ordinary raiyati.

Riyayati / Khud-Kasht (The Privileged Cultivators):

• The riyayati section consisted of resident owner-cultivators, variously called mirasi (in Maharashtra), gharu-hala (in Rajasthan), and khud-kasht (in Persian usage).
• The defining features of the khud-kasht were resident status within the village, ownership of land, and cultivation of that land through family labour, supplemented as needed by hired labour.
• Privileges of the khud-kasht:
  • They paid land revenue at a concessional rate.
  • They were partially or wholly exempt from various additional imposts, such as taxes on marriages or houses.
  • The khud-kasht right carried genuine social prestige as well as economic advantage — resident cultivators effectively formed the governing body of the village community, its bhadralok, or respectable class.
  • They enjoyed a range of further privileges, including access to village pastures, forest land, water reservoirs and fishing rights, and to the services of village officials and functionaries.
• Beyond the khud-kasht proper, the broader privileged (riyayati) category also included members of the higher castes — Brahmans, Rajputs, and Mahajans (banias) — as well as local village officials such as the patel or chaudhari, qanungo, and patwari, though many of these officials were themselves drawn from the khud-kasht body.
• Riyayatis were assessed under a separate dastur (tax regulation) that varied across different parts of the country, though land revenue for this group was generally fixed at around one-fourth of produce.
• Owing to caste taboos, Brahmans did not typically cultivate land themselves, instead having it ploughed through hired labour. Concessions in land revenue were, on occasion, also extended to other privileged sections as circumstances demanded.

Raiyatis (Ordinary Cultivators):

• The general category of ordinary cultivators was known as raiyatis, or paltis in Rajasthan, and muzarian in Persian usage. Paltis generally belonged to the middle castes — Jat, Gujar, Mali, Ahir, Meena, and similar groups — and could be either landowners (malik, dhani) of the fields they worked, or tenants.
• Raiyati owner-cultivators were assessed under the variable raiyati dastur, which itself fluctuated according to the nature of the crop, the season, and the available means of irrigation.
  • As a general norm, the land revenue levied on polaj land for the ordinary peasant amounted to roughly one-half of the produce, while wheat and bajra were typically charged at two-fifths. This figure for land revenue did not include additional cesses (jihat).
• Raiyati or palti tenants may themselves be divided into two further categories:
  • State tenants, who cultivated cultivable wasteland (banjar) or land abandoned by a previous dhani or owner-cultivator. Such tenants generally possessed their own ploughs and oxen and were issued a patta, usually renewable.
  • Dhani tenants, who tilled the personal lands of zamindars, bhomias, patels, or holders of inam grants. These tenants were frequently dependent on the mahajan, zamindar, or patel for bullocks, ploughs, and seeds, and either paid rent in addition to land revenue to the landowner, or cultivated on a share-cropping basis. This group generally enjoyed relatively low social standing.
• Paltis also moved from village to village in search of better terms, or were offered concessional arrangements to help settle a deserted or newly established village — a mobility that sometimes made them difficult to distinguish from pahis.
• Beyond the cultivators proper, there existed a distinct class of landless labourers (majurs) who worked for wages.

Pahis, or Outsiders

The khud-kasht stand in useful contrast to the pahi (or pai-kasht), cultivators who arrived from neighbouring villages or parganas to work surplus land, resettle a ruined village, or establish an entirely new one.

• Pahis were frequently granted pattas at concessional rates, with the full assessment rate becoming payable only in the third or fifth year — or sometimes even later — the precise concession varying with local circumstances.
• Where pahis lacked their own implements, they were provided with ploughs, bullocks, seeds, manure, and money — either directly by the state, or through the village moneylender (bohra). They were permitted to retain their fields for as long as they continued to pay land revenue.
• The movement of peasants between villages — whether driven by natural factors such as famine, or by human causes such as war or local oppression — was hardly a new phenomenon. Peasants had long relocated in search of improved conditions: to settle new villages, expand cultivation in existing ones, or resettle abandoned land. During periods of general unrest, the number of pahis is likely to have increased substantially, as later evidence from the 18th century suggests.
• In some instances, pahis were drawn from the ranks of Dalits, who moved to new or ruined villages in the hope of eventually acquiring ownership rights over land they themselves had brought under cultivation — an aspiration typically foreclosed to them in their villages of origin by prevailing social taboos.
• It would, however, be inaccurate to characterise pahis simply as temporary or migrant workers, since the majority ultimately settled permanently in their new villages and, over the course of one or more generations, could be fully absorbed into the body of resident cultivators.

Intermediate Proprietors

Beyond the cultivating classes stood the intermediate proprietors, uniformly known as zamindars. These figures claimed a defined share of agricultural produce and exercised authority over village affairs by virtue of long-established historical tradition.

• Medieval rulers formally recognised zamindars because of the valuable assistance they rendered in collecting revenue from the peasantry — a service for which zamindars were entitled to a fixed percentage of the total revenue collected.
• As a social group, however, the zamindars were themselves considerably fragmented along lines of caste association and kinship ties, rather than forming any single unified class.

Craft and Service Communities

A significant portion of India’s rural population belonged to the various craft and service communities — ironsmiths, carpenters, rope-makers, potters, leather workers, barbers, washermen, and village watchmen, among others.

• These communities rendered genuinely valuable services to the village and simultaneously served as a cheap and readily available source of agricultural labour when required.
• In Maharashtra, this service sector comprised twelve distinct occupational groups, known collectively as balutedars, who received a prescribed share of village produce called the baluta.
• A further category, known as alutedars, was found mainly in larger villages, and included village priests, tailors, water-carriers, gardeners, drum-beaters, vocalists, musicians, oil-pressers, betel-nut sellers, and goldsmiths. These groups typically received a somewhat lower share of village produce, or were instead allotted a strip of land in lieu of direct remuneration.
• The landless, along with the bulk of these service classes, were generally designated kamin, or “low,” and this category included a sizable proportion of Dalits.

The Relative Proportions of Rural Society

Estimates for the relative size of the three principal sections — riyayati, raiyati, and the service classes — vary by region.

• In some estimates pertaining to eastern Rajasthan, the riyayati or privileged classes made up around 13 per cent of the population, the service classes roughly 11 per cent, and the remainder — approximately 76 per cent — comprised the general body of raiyati cultivators.
• The limited surviving evidence suggests that, while the large majority of cultivators occupied a broadly middling economic status, many larger villages contained 4 to 15 asamis — constituting roughly 5 to 10 per cent of the total — who were genuinely financially affluent. At the other end of the spectrum, 15 to 30 per cent of cultivators in many villages possessed neither land nor the means of cultivation, and could reasonably be classified as poor. This figure does not even account for the landless and the poorer sections among the service classes proper.

Disparity and Its Effects on Village Growth

Economic disparity within the village exerted both positive and negative effects on its overall growth and development.

Negative Effects:

• The wealthier sections — including the mahajans — regularly lent oxen, ploughs, and seeds to poorer cultivators, or advanced money to help them meet their land revenue obligations, recovering these dues with interest at the time of harvest.
• In cases of default, the richer sections would often foreclose on the debtor’s land outright.
• Similarly, during periods of famine, wealthier villagers extended loans to weaker cultivators, using their own accumulated resources to bring abandoned fields under their own cultivation.
• The state itself rarely intervened in these dynamics, its principal concern being simply to prevent the privileged sections from converting raiyati land — assessed at the standard rate — into riyayati land, which enjoyed a concessional rate of revenue.

Positive Effects:

• It was, in fact, the privileged sections — including the village zamindar and the wealthier cultivators — who played the leading role in providing the capital, implements, and organisational capacity necessary for expanding and improving cultivation. This included introducing higher-quality crops such as wheat and various cash crops (cotton, indigo, oilseeds), which demanded additional upfront investment, as well as entirely new crops such as tobacco and maize.
• These superior crops typically required more water and were generally considerably more labour-intensive than traditional staples.

At present, there is insufficient evidence to determine conclusively whether rural poverty was steadily growing during this period, or whether it was primarily the rich who were becoming progressively richer. A common assumption holds that whenever central or local governmental control weakened, the richer sections of village society tended to shift the resulting burden onto the shoulders of the weaker peasantry.

Rural society in Mughal India was not, however, an undifferentiated mass of uniformly pauperised peasants. The twin processes of social stratification and growing income disparity proceeded side by side with genuine expansion and improvement of cultivation — though both processes could, of course, be seriously disrupted by any general breakdown of law and order, or by the absence of an equitable approach to the levying and collection of land revenue.

Standard of Living

Both indigenous sources and the accounts of foreign travellers who visited India during the 16th and 17th centuries present a picture of a small ruling elite living in considerable ostentation and luxury, sharply contrasted with the far more precarious condition of the peasant, artisan, and labouring masses. This stark contrast between the living standards of the ruling classes and the general population was, it should be noted, by no means unique to India — it existed, to a greater or lesser degree, in virtually every “civilized” country of the world during this period, Europe very much included.

The Indian village itself was highly segmented, both socially and economically, and considerable inequality existed in the distribution of land — even though ample cultivable wasteland (banjar) remained available, capable of being brought under the plough wherever sufficient capital, labour, and organisation could be mustered.

• Although rural society was genuinely stratified, with considerable inequality existing even within a single village, contemporary sources rarely highlight these internal disparities directly, tending instead to treat the rural population as something approaching a monolithic block.
• It would, in reality, be quite unrealistic to postulate a single, uniform standard of living for all peasants and artisans within a given village — just as no two villages were themselves genuinely alike. Some of the larger villages, for instance, functioned as grain-collection centres or hosted a local market (mandi), and it was in precisely these villages — which often grew into full qasbas — that a disproportionate share of the wealthier peasantry, grain-dealers (mahajans), and moneylenders tended to reside.
• In lean years, or during periods of famine, the poor were frequently driven to outright starvation or forced migration to the towns — while the rich, and a section of the middle peasantry, often found in these same crises an opportunity to draw poorer peasants into debt, or to acquire their land and agricultural implements outright.

Clothing

The quantity of clothing worn by rural India serves as a useful, if imperfect, index of general poverty.

Men:

• Babur observed that in India, “peasants and people of low standing go about naked,” before going on to describe the modest decency-cloth worn by men, and the sari worn by women.
• Abul Fazl similarly notes that common people “for the most part went naked, wearing only a cloth (lungi) about the loins.”
• Contemporary travellers largely confirm this description, adding that during the winter months, men wore cotton gowns and caps, both typically quilted.
  • Ralph Fitch, writing during Akbar’s reign, observed that “the people go naked save a little cloth bound about their middle, (but)… In the winter, the men wear quilted gowns of cotton and quilted caps.”

Women:

• Women have generally been described as wearing cotton saris, though considerable regional variation existed in the use of an accompanying blouse.
  • In Malabar and eastern India, women (and men alike) generally wore nothing above the waist. Moreland cites this as evidence of general scantiness of clothing — though, in fact, in many rural areas of eastern India, going without a blouse remained common practice well into recent times, suggesting this was as much a regional custom as an index of poverty.
  • In other parts of India, rural women wore a blouse known as the choli or angiya — the Hindi poet Surdas specifically mentions cholis and angiyas of various colours worn by the milkmaids of the Agra-Mathura region.
  • In parts of western and central India, women wore lahangas (skirts) in place of the sari, paired with a blouse above.
• The overwhelming general impression that emerges from these accounts is one of genuine scantiness of clothing. While climatic factors and regional social traditions certainly played their part, this scantiness also served as a meaningful marker of poverty — the upper classes and privileged sections could readily be distinguished by the type and quality of clothing they wore. Despite cotton production and weaving being widespread across the country, cloth itself remained comparatively more expensive than it is today.
• The wearing of shoes among the rural population was similarly uncommon, and appears to have been largely confined to the wealthier village sections, for whom footwear carried a distinct mark of respectability. Shepherds, masons, labourers, and palanquin-bearers are depicted wearing shoes in contemporary paintings.
  • Satish Chandra, drawing on the works of Hindi poets such as Surdas and Tulsidas, notes panahi and upanaha as the two terms then in common use for shoes.

Jewellery

Then as now, women — both rich and poor alike — wore jewellery in considerable quantity, a practice richly described by contemporary writers in Persian and various regional languages, and frequently depicted in the paintings of the period.

• Foreign travellers, too, took particular note of this striking phenomenon. Ralph Fitch, writing of Patna, observed: “Here the women be so bedecked with silver and copper that it is strange to see, they use no shoes by reason of the rings of silver and copper they wear on their toes.”
• Alongside gold, silver, and copper ornaments, jewellery made of glass or ivory was also commonly used.

Housing

A significant proportion of the rural population lived in simple houses constructed of mud with thatched roofs, generally consisting of a single room.

• Pelsaert, who visited India during Jahangir’s reign, left a vivid description of typical rural housing: “Their houses are built of mud with thatched roofs. Furniture there is little or none, except some earthenware pots to hold water and for cooking, and two beds, one for the man, the other for his wife. Their bedclothes are scanty, merely a sheet, or perhaps two, serving both as under and over-sheet; this is sufficient in the hot weather, but the bitter cold nights are miserable indeed, and they try to keep warm over little cowdung fires which are lit outside the doors, because the houses have no fire-places or chimneys.”
• Considerable regional variation existed in housing style, largely dictated by the availability of local building materials:
  • In Bengal and Orissa, huts were built by roping bamboo onto a mud plinth, with thatched roofs.
  • In Gujarat, houses were often roofed with tiles (khaprail) and frequently built of brick and lime.
  • In Assam, wood, bamboo, and straw were the principal materials.
  • In Kashmir, huts were built primarily of wood.
  • Across north and central India, mud thatched with straw remained the dominant building material.
  • In the South, huts were commonly covered with cajan leaves.
• Many of these dwellings were built so low that a person could not stand fully upright inside them, and rooms typically lacked windows altogether — owing to the hot climate, the entrance alone was generally considered sufficient for both light and ventilation.
• While the poorest villagers sometimes shared their single-room dwellings with their livestock, wealthier rural households possessed homes with several rooms, dedicated space for storing food grain, and an enclosed courtyard.
• The house of the ordinary peasant, by contrast, was typically devoid of any real furniture beyond a few cots and simple bamboo mats. Manrique noted that such houses were nonetheless kept remarkably clean, with the ground and walls frequently replastered using a mixture of mud and cow-dung.

Utensils

Rural households generally possessed no metal utensils at all, with the sole exception of the iron pan used for baking bread. The pots commonly used even for everyday cooking were made of simple earthenware — utensils crafted from bell-metal or copper were considerably more expensive, and generally remained beyond the reach of the poorer villager.

Food and Diet

The diet of the common people across most of India consisted chiefly of rice, millets, and pulses. Pelsaert observed simply that “they know little of the taste of meat.” Irfan Habib further notes that it was generally “the lowest varieties, out of his produce,” that the peasant was able to retain for his own family’s consumption.

• In regions where rice served as the dominant crop — Bengal, Orissa, Sindh, Kashmir, and parts of South India — it naturally formed the staple diet of the rural population.
• In Rajasthan and Gujarat, millets such as juwar and bajra constituted the primary food source.
• According to Satish Chandra, wheat was apparently not a significant part of the common diet even in the wheat-producing Agra–Delhi region itself. Writing of Malwa, the traveller Terry noted that “the ordinary sort of people” did not eat wheat, instead relying on flour made from “a coarser grain,” formed into “round broad and thick cakes (chapatis)” that were, in his estimation, both “wholesome and hearty.”
• Grain-based staples were regularly supplemented by herbs (saga), beans, and various locally grown vegetables, and, in coastal regions such as Bengal, Orissa, and Sindh, by fish. A firm taboo existed, however, against the consumption of beef.
• Describing the Delhi–Agra region specifically, Pelsaert observed of ordinary workmen that “for their monotonous daily food they have nothing but a little kitchery (khichri) made of the green pulse, mixed with rice… eaten with butter in the evening, in the day time they munch a little parched pulse or other grain (sattu).”
• For most of the rural population, only one major meal was taken each day, generally around midday or somewhat earlier; a considerably lighter meal followed at sunset.
• Interestingly, ghee appears to have formed a genuinely staple part of the diet across Northern India, Bengal, and Western India. The Bengali poet Mukundarama mentions various delicacies made from curd, milk, and jaggery (gur), which the poor could typically afford only on the occasion of marriages and festivals — though gur itself seems to have been fairly commonly consumed in villages more generally.

Famine and Epidemics

Famine and epidemics ranked among the two great recurring scourges of village life. Famines occurred with considerable frequency, and the more severe episodes were often accompanied by devastating epidemics capable of depopulating entire villages. Nevertheless, for many contemporary writers composing in regional languages, village life itself was frequently portrayed as something of an ideal — a life whose joys and sorrows alike were to be met with a certain philosophical equanimity.

Standard of Living Among Workmen

Wages for ordinary workmen have been recorded both in the Ain-i-Akbari and by numerous contemporary travellers.

• According to the Ain, an ordinary labourer earned roughly 2 dams a day, or about Rs. 1½ per month, while a more skilled labourer could expect 3 to 4 dams a day, or roughly Rs. 2¼ to 3 per month.
• Carpenters earned between 3 and 7 dams, and builders between 5 and 7 dams, per day. Pietro della Valle notes that at Surat, domestic servants could be hired very cheaply, for as little as Rs. 3 a month.
• It has been estimated that the basic necessities of a single individual could be met on roughly Re. 1 a month, while Rs. 2 a month was generally sufficient to feed an entire family of five.
• Slaves were numerous during this period, and typically received nothing beyond their basic upkeep.
• Pelsaert records that palanquin-bearers earned Rs. 4 a month for short journeys, rising to Rs. 5 a month for journeys exceeding sixty days; soldiers hired for protective escort duty received comparable wages.

Comparing Living Standards Across Time: It remains genuinely difficult to draw a precise comparison between the food available to the poor in Mughal times and in the modern era. The peasant of Mughal India was, in some respects, more fortunate in his access to ghee, while his modern descendant benefits from greater access to salt and to three entirely new food items — maize, potatoes, and chillies — unavailable in the medieval period.

• The modern Indian economist Ashok Desai has argued that, given the considerably larger average size of landholdings, higher land productivity, and a more favourable land-to-population ratio prevailing at the time, “the standards of food consumption were substantially higher than now.”
• By comparing prices and wages between Akbar’s era and the present day, it appears that while a wage-earner of Akbar’s time could have purchased more wheat than his modern counterpart, wheat itself hardly figured prominently in his actual diet. He could, however, purchase considerably more gram, barley, milk, ghee, and even goat meat than a modern-day worker — though it should be noted that relatively few workmen, Muslims aside, actually consumed meat as a regular part of their diet.
• According to Ashok Desai, “the purchasing power of the wages was nearly the same in 1595 and 1961. But the low-paid worker of Akbar’s time was able to keep the standard of nutrition much higher than now because of cheap meat, ghee and milk. Sugar and gur were expensive; even salt a little costlier for him.”

Share of Produce Paid by Different Categories of Peasants

• The general Mughal formula for land revenue ranged from one-third to one-half of produce, though the precise share actually levied depended on several factors — the nature of the soil, the financial strength of the owner-cultivator, the influence of the local dominant zamindar, and prevailing custom.
• Caste also played a meaningful role in determining this share. In parts of Rajasthan and Orissa, for instance, the upper castes — Brahmans, Kshatriyas, or Rajputs — paid land revenue at a distinctly concessional rate, sometimes as low as 25%, while other cultivators were assessed at rates as high as 40%.
• Village officials, such as the chaudhris and muqaddams, were similarly sometimes assessed at a concessional rate.
• Such concessions were also occasionally extended to ordinary cultivators under special circumstances — most notably, in the resettlement of a previously deserted village. In these cases, however, the concession was strictly temporary, with the land revenue rate gradually increasing until it reached the normal assessment by the third or fifth year of settlement.

Social Life in Rural India

Though only sparsely documented in surviving sources, historians have attempted a reconstruction of rural social life based on scattered information gleaned from contemporary literature, along with occasional references found in the chronicles of the period.

Festivals and Amusements

• A measure of household income was regularly devoted to the frequent fairs and festivals that punctuated rural life, offering welcome relief from otherwise drab daily routines, as well as a rare opportunity to purchase goods not locally produced within the village itself.
• Although the Muslim and non-Muslim populations of rural India naturally celebrated distinct sets of festivals rooted in their respective religious traditions, the two communities frequently participated in one another’s festivities as well — a genuine mark of the shared, composite texture of rural social life.
• Most non-Muslim festivals were closely tied to particular agricultural seasons, timed deliberately so that the peasantry found itself in a state of comparative leisure — for instance, following the completion of harvest — and thus naturally disposed towards celebration. The most widely observed of these festivals were Basant Panchami, Holi, Deepavali, and Shivratri.
• By this period (roughly the 16th to 18th centuries), Muslim festivals too had come to bear a distinct imprint of the Indian environment. Eid, Shab-e-Barat, and Muharram ranked among the most popular festivals celebrated by rural Muslims.
  • The historian M. Ashraf has suggested that Shab-e-Barat was likely modelled, at least in part, on the Hindu festival of Shivratri — a further illustration of the genuine cultural syncretism characterising rural religious life.
• Dancing and singing remained the single most popular forms of general amusement among the rural masses. Household money was similarly spent, often at considerable cost, on birth and death ceremonies and on marriages — expenses that, on occasion, necessitated the contracting of fresh debt.