Peasant Revolts of Jats, Satnamis, Sikhs and Marathas
In the first half of the 18th century, the Mughal Empire faced strong and sustained opposition from numerous social groups — among them the Jats, Satnamis, Sikhs, and Marathas.
The Historiographical Debate
- Imperialist and early nationalist scholars, such as Jadunath Sarkar, interpreted these challenges to Mughal authority as a Hindu reaction against Muslim orthodoxy and oppression. Subsequent theories — of “national awakening,” the “jagirdari crisis,” and “lower-class uprisings” — have similarly attempted to explain this complex historical phenomenon.
- A genuinely systematic approach to the question was first developed by Irfan Habib, who set out his analysis in The Agrarian Causes for the Fall of the Mughal Empire.
- According to Habib, these revolts never truly represented a Hindu reaction to Muslim authority, nor were they organised primarily along caste lines — instead, they reflected a combined attack by zamindars and peasants against oppressive Mughal authority. As Habib summarised it: “The rising of the oppressed thus became inseparable from the conflict between two oppressing classes.”
- Moreland was among the earliest scholars to propose a genuinely economic theory of Mughal decline. While Habib’s own thesis draws substantially on Moreland’s foundational work, a key distinction separates the two: Moreland framed these revolts within the lens of Oriental Despotism, whereas Habib categorised them instead as instances of class-based exploitation.
The Structure of Agrarian Exploitation
- As Chetan Singh observes in The Mughal State, the magnificent structure of the Mughal state, and the continued dominance of its ruling elite, rested fundamentally upon the state’s ability to appropriate a major share of the surplus generated by agrarian society.
- The land revenue (or mal) demanded on the state’s behalf formed by far the largest portion of its income. While land revenue collected under the zabt system during Akbar’s reign amounted to roughly one-third of a peasant’s total produce, under Aurangzeb this figure soared to fully half of total produce.
- Arzdasht reports indicate that, by 1655, the total produce actually realised from peasants under the batai system reached 65%, and under the zabt system, 52%, of gross produce. As Irfan Habib remarks, Mughal India served not merely as the protective arm of the exploiting classes, but was itself the principal instrument of exploitation.
- Satish Chandra’s concept of a tripolar relationship offers perhaps the clearest explanatory framework here: the Mughal Empire rested upon three poles — the peasantry (raiyat), the zamindars, and the jagirdars (including mansabdars).
- The task of collecting revenue fell to the jagirdars, whose agents were frequently in conflict with the zamindars — themselves revenue collectors, but of a distinct category. In return for their service, jagirdars received both a share of the collected land revenue and the jagir itself.
- Since jagirdars were frequently transferred — typically every three to four years — they had little incentive to consider the long-term welfare of the peasantry or of agriculture itself, and instead sought to extract as much revenue as possible during their tenure (as recorded by contemporary observers such as Bhimsen, Xavier, Hawkins, Manrique, and Bernier). This practice of frequent jagir transfers grew markedly worse during Aurangzeb’s reign.
- Since Mughal land-revenue demand was already fixed at close to the highest sustainable level, leaving peasants with barely a subsistence income, the additional pressure exerted by jagirdars carried serious consequences — both for the peasantry itself, and for the wider Mughal Empire.
- As Irfan Habib argues, the rising jama (assessed revenue) figures of this period do not, in fact, indicate any real growth in cultivation — since such apparent growth is effectively nullified by the simultaneous secular rise in prices. Instead, the steady increase in assessment, compounded by extortion during actual collection, made any genuine prospect of agrarian development essentially impossible.
Peasant Resistance and Flight
- Owing to this combination of high revenue demand and further extortion by collectors, Manrique reports that when the arrayatos (cultivators) proved unable to pay, they were beaten mercilessly and subjected to severe maltreatment.
- Manucci, similarly, reports that peasants were frequently compelled to sell their women, children, and cattle merely to meet revenue demands. As a direct consequence, peasants are reported to have regularly absconded from their lands — a pattern witnessed most famously in the so-called “Karori experiment.” Throughout the reigns of Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb, the flight of peasants from the land became an entirely common phenomenon.
- As Irfan Habib notes, while the classic peasant act of defiance remained the simple refusal to pay land revenue, many more combative peasants were ultimately goaded into outright rebellion (per Manucci’s account).
- Villages that refused to pay taxes, or that rose in open rebellion, came to be known as malwas or zor-talab, as distinct from ordinary revenue-paying villages, termed raiyati.
- Villages naturally protected by ravines, forests, or hills proved considerably more likely to defy Mughal authority than those situated on open plains. Until Aurangzeb’s reign, such conflicts generally remained local and isolated incidents.
- Importantly, the upper strata of cultivators — the khudkashts — were relatively less affected by this system of oppression; the real victims were the lower strata: the pahis, the gaveti-palti (drawn largely from the Jats, Gurjars, and Ahirs), the gharuhalas, and the rezariaya and balahars.
Factors Uniting the Peasants: Caste and Religion
- Two factors proved crucial in uniting peasants against Mughal authority: caste, and the influence of monotheistic religious sects.
- While caste factors were central to the Jat revolts, as well as to the broadly lawless activities of the Mewatis, Wattus, and Dogars, Satnami opposition rested far more heavily on the radical ideas of the monotheistic movements.
- Notably, most leaders of these monotheistic movements — figures such as Kabir, Ravidas, Dadu, and Haridas — themselves came from low-caste backgrounds, and consciously rejected the barriers of caste. Though these leaders never fostered explicitly warlike sentiment, nor preached militancy as such, the underlying sense of unity and contempt for caste distinction they cultivated ultimately led both the Sikhs and Satnamis to rise in rebellion against the Mughals.
The Role of the Zamindars
- As Irfan Habib notes, the genuine transformation of scattered peasant unrest into organised rebellion was likely brought about through the intervention of elements from the zamindar class, who pursued their own distinct motives in opposing Mughal rule. This occurred through two related processes:
- Peasant rebellions, at some stage of their development, typically passed under the leadership of established zamindars — or, alternatively, the peasants’ own leaders themselves assumed the effective status of zamindars.
- From the very outset, the desperation of the peasantry provided a ready pool of recruits for rebelling zamindars to draw upon.
- The term zamindar itself embraced a wide category of rights over land — ranging from genuinely autonomous chieftains to individuals claiming little more than a small perquisite from a single village, or even a mere fraction of one.
- Large areas of Rajasthan, Central India, Kathiawar, and the sub-Himalayan tracts remained under such tributary chiefs, while, as Nurul Hasan observes, the more modest primary zamindars were a general and widespread phenomenon across the empire.
- Nevertheless, the zamindari right carried certain common features everywhere: possession was hereditary, and it owed its origin not to any imperial grant, but to independent acquisition — through clan settlement, usurpation, or outright purchase.
- The possession of armed force was, for any zamindari right of real consequence, an almost inevitable accompaniment. Abul Fazl records that zamindars across the empire maintained, in aggregate, some 44 lakh armed retainers.
- The central point of conflict between imperial authorities and the zamindars concerned the precise size of the zamindars’ share in land revenue or surplus produce.
- Primary zamindars were, in principle, treated merely as tax-gatherers acting on behalf of the state and its assignees. As Irfan Habib notes, their exactions from the peasantry were restricted not only by formal regulation, but far more effectively by the sheer intensity of the state’s own revenue demand — which left very little surplus for anyone else to extract.
- Autonomous chiefs, for their part, remained perpetually anxious over the constant threat of outright annexation. Revisionist scholars, in contrast to the Aligarh school of Mughal historians, have instead argued that the real cause of zamindari unrest lay in their own ambition to expand their zamindaris.
- Zamindari defiance had, in fact, already begun as early as Akbar’s reign, when faujdars and jagirdars are recorded as having repeatedly quelled such resistance.
- The true climax of zamindari unrest, however, arrived under Aurangzeb, by which point the peasantry too had become united in their struggles. Irfan Habib, in his The Agrarian System of Mughal India, notes that it was precisely the zamindars’ precarious position in this unequal contest, together with their existing contacts among the peasantry, that led many of them to adopt a genuinely conciliatory attitude towards peasants — whose support proved indispensable both for defence and, when necessary, for flight.
- This united front posed a serious and credible challenge to the supposed invincibility of Mughal cavalry. By Aurangzeb’s reign, the character of the struggle had visibly shifted from a broadly defensive to an increasingly aggressive stance.
The Jat Revolt
- In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the region around Agra and the Yamuna came to be dominated by the revolts of the Jats — a community earlier dismissed simply as ganwars (rustics), and initially led by Rajput zamindars.
- Inhabiting the villages between Delhi and Agra, the Jats were, par excellence, “a peasant caste,” though a number of them did in time acquire zamindari status of their own.
- Throughout its active phase, the Jat rebellion was led by prominent Jat zamindars — including Gokula Jat, Raja Ram Jat, and Churaman Jat. Their recruitment of Chamars for military support further illustrates the overlordship these zamindars exercised over such semi-servile communities.
- Over time, the Jat revolt grew into a large-scale plundering movement — a trajectory shaped both by the narrow caste horizons of the peasantry involved, and by the openly plundering instincts of their zamindar leadership.
- Notably, the Jat rebels maintained no particular connection to any specific religious movement, unlike the Satnami and Sikh revolts, which were far more firmly cemented through religious factors.
The Satnami Revolt
- The Satnamis, also known as Mundiyas, were a sect of the Bairagis, founded in 1657. Their teachings displayed a clear attitude of sympathy toward the poor, combined with open hostility toward established authority and wealth — a religious outlook naturally appealing to the lower classes.
- As the chronicler Ishwardas records, the Satnamis drew no meaningful distinction between Muslims and Hindus, a stance clearly reflecting the fundamentally plebeian character of their movement.
- The revolts of these initially peaceful believers, who ultimately turned to seditious and armed resistance, remained largely confined to the Narnaul and Bairat regions. Following some initial successes, however, a large imperial army eventually subdued these determined but under-resourced militants.
The Sikh Revolt
- Although the specifically “peasant” dimension of the movement can be somewhat harder to isolate in the case of the Satnami revolts, one may reasonably characterise the Sikh religion itself as, in essence, a “peasant religion” (per Habib).
- The markedly egalitarian nature of Sikhism is reflected in the deliberate use of everyday Jatt vernacular language in the teachings of both Guru Nanak and Guru Arjan Dev, a pattern also noted in the Dabistan-i-Mazahib.
- It was, in fact, Guru Arjan who took the first concrete steps toward creating a genuinely well-knit and disciplined religious organisation. The Sikhs, however, only emerged as a true military power under Guru Hargobind, whose own armed following came into direct conflict with Mughal power.
- Sikh militancy was further fostered under Guru Gobind Singh and Banda Bahadur, drawing support from scavengers, tanners, banjaras, and even Muslim recruits.
- While critiquing Muzaffar Alam’s earlier position — that Banda Bahadur’s principal strength derived chiefly from zamindar support — Irfan Habib instead argues that within the Sikh revolts, any such zamindar involvement was substantially diluted by a conscious and deliberate appeal to the lower classes themselves.
Other Peasant and Tribal Struggles
- Among other, more disparate struggles of the period, one may note that peasants sometimes vented their anger directly against zamindars themselves, rather than solely against Mughal authority — as witnessed among the Meos of Mewat.
- R.P. Rana has already highlighted the extent to which oppression by local bhomias contributed directly to broader raiyati–zamindari conflicts in this region.
- Among other notable revolts of the period, one may also mention the Koli rebellion in Gujarat and the Bundela rebellion.
The Maratha Rebellion
- Until the influential 1975 symposium, Irfan Habib’s theory of peasant revolts as the primary driver of Mughal decline remained the dominant scholarly framework. His broader thesis reaches something of an apotheosis in his examination of the Maratha rebellion: according to Habib, “The Marathas undoubtedly constituted the greatest single force responsible for the downfall of the Mughal Empire.”
- The contemporary chronicler Bhimsen records that oppression at the hands of jagirdars and amildars drove peasants to migrate en masse — with even some mansabdars, by his account, similarly compelled to relocate.
- The Marathas under Shivaji proved a genuinely favourable destination for many such migrants. Indeed, the indigenous peasantry of the Deccan (Dakhin), well before Shivaji’s own rise to prominence, had already begun migrating in response to the destructive passage of large imperial armies through the region.
- Shivaji’s army grew so formidable through this influx of peasant recruits that, by 1658, Aurangzeb is reported to have urged his own officials to mete out capital punishment to peasants, deshmukhs, and patels across the parganas of imperial territory, in an effort to stem the tide.
- It is important to note, however, that Shivaji and the Maratha chiefs cannot themselves be properly termed leaders of a genuine peasant uprising, since they represented, in essence, a class of their own — one actively aspiring to zamindari status.
- Peasants, in this reading, served largely as instruments for these leaders’ own ambitions of acquiring zamindari rights; the famous characterisation of “naked, starved rascals” (peasants) rested squarely on Shivaji’s own operating principle — “no plunder, no pay.”
- As Bhimsen’s own account makes clear, Maratha military operations offered the cultivating peasantry little genuine relief — on the contrary, peasants suffered grievously from the depredations of both the Maratha armies and their Mughal opponents alike.
- Cambridge historians such as M.N. Pearson and J.F. Richards, by contrast, place greater emphasis on Aurangzeb’s own ill-conceived decision to expand aggressively into the Deccan, converting conquered lands into khalisa (crown land), as the true underlying cause of Mughal decline.
- Aurangzeb himself was, by his final years, keenly aware of this corrosion of Mughal authority, reportedly lamenting: “There is no province or district where the infidels have not raised a tumult and since they are not chastised, they have established themselves everywhere.”
A Historical Paradox
- If peasant distress indeed lay at the very root of the rebellions that shook the Mughal Empire to its foundations, these rebellions themselves nonetheless present a striking historical paradox: nowhere does the actual alleviation of this distress form part of the rebels’ own proclaimed objectives or documented deeds.
- This marks a genuinely significant point of contrast between agrarian revolts in India and their counterparts in China and Europe. According to Irfan Habib, this predicament resulted chiefly from the inherent weakness of class consciousness among Indian peasants — an elementary failure, on their part, to recognise any coherent sense of peasant brotherhood amid the surrounding welter of castes and religious sects.
Revisionist Debates
- Where Irfan Habib reads the 18th-century revolts fundamentally as peasant revolts, Muzaffar Alam, by contrast, reads them as movements substantially orchestrated and directed by zamindars.
- Alam’s case is particularly strong with respect to Awadh, where local zamindars, merchants, and holders of madad-i-maash grants became genuinely central to the functioning of emerging regional powers over the course of the 18th century.
- In a further case study of Punjab, Alam argues that the revolts there ultimately failed owing to sharp internal social divisions between the zamindars and a peasantry organised largely along competing lines of caste and community.
- Adjoining these revisionist debates are the distinct interpretations of Chetan Singh, who, in his Conformity and Conflict: Tribes and the “Agrarian System” of Mughal India, argues that the prevailing scholarly overemphasis on zamindars and peasants as the primary recalcitrant classes has led to the systematic neglect of tribal populations.
- In his own case study of Punjab, Singh argues that local tribal groups were every bit as integral to the region’s agrarian system as any other caste or class. Taken together, the peasant revolts and the parallel conflicts of tribal communities against Mughal authority present a more complete and holistic picture of the period’s broader agrarian crisis.
Conclusion: Decline or Regional Centralisation?
- In conclusion, it should be noted that the various revisionist theories discussed above are not confined merely to explaining the agrarian crisis in isolation — they propose, in addition, that a genuine period of regional development unfolded simultaneously alongside this very crisis.
- For historians such as Muzaffar Alam, Chetan Singh, Stewart Gordon, and C.A. Bayly, the 18th century was thus not defined by Mughal decline alone, as the conventional “agrarian crisis” narrative might suggest — but was, equally, a genuine century of regional centralisation.
- The Nawabi rulerships of Hyderabad, Bengal, and Awadh, alongside the emerging military-fiscal states of the Marathas and Mysore, stand as ample evidence for this broader continuity thesis.
