Population in Mughal India

Population in Mughal India

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• Reliable Indian population statistics properly begin only with the census of 1872. For the Mughal Empire itself, there exists a near-total dearth of genuine demographic data:
  • Akbar is said to have ordered a detailed population survey, but its results have not survived to us.
  • Even the A’in-i-Akbari, despite the sheer variety of statistical information it contains, offers no direct estimate of the population for either the whole of Akbar’s Empire or any part of it.
• Modern scholars remain divided over the actual size of the population in Mughal India.
  • Initially, a figure of 100 million was widely accepted.
  • Subsequent re-examination of the underlying data led to a considerable upward revision — it is now generally estimated that the population of undivided India totalled between 140 and 150 million, with roughly 100 million residing within Mughal territory specifically.
• No phase of economic history can be properly studied without accounting for the demographic factor — for pre-modern societies especially, population growth is often treated as a major index of underlying economic growth. It is, therefore, entirely legitimate to attempt an estimate of the Indian population on the basis of the diverse quantitative data available to us.
  • Since no formal census was ever conducted under the Mughal Empire, any such estimate must necessarily be built upon indirect data of other kinds — the richest such source being the A’in-i-Akbari of Abul Fazl.

Moreland’s Estimate

On the Basis of the Extent of Cultivated Area

• W.H. Moreland made the first serious attempt to estimate Mughal India’s population using data drawn from the A’in-i-Akbari, seeking to determine the population of Northern India from the figures the A’in provides.
  • This work gives figures for arazi (measured area) recorded for revenue purposes, which Moreland took to represent the gross cropped area.
• Moreland sought to use these statistics, first, to calculate the total area under cultivation at the end of the 16th century, and then to estimate, on this basis, the total population of the Mughal Empire.
  • He assumed that the arazi figures represented the gross cropped area, and compared them against gross cultivation figures from the beginning of the 20th century, assuming a broadly constant correspondence between the extent of cultivation and the size of the population across the intervening period.
  • On this basis, he calculated the population of the region from Multan to Monghyr at somewhere between 30 and 40 million at the close of the 16th century.

Applying a Civilian–Soldier Ratio (For the Deccan and South India)

• For the Deccan and South India, Moreland instead based his calculations on the recorded military strength of the Vijayanagara Empire and the Deccan Sultanates.
  • Adopting a rather arbitrary ratio of 1:30 between soldiers and the general civilian population, he estimated the population of this region at 30 million.
• After calculating the population of the remaining territories within the pre-1947 boundaries of India — beyond these two specific regions — Moreland arrived at a population of 60 million for Akbar’s Empire in 1600, and a figure of 100 million for India as a whole.
• These estimates received wide scholarly acceptance at the time; nevertheless, Moreland’s underlying assumptions — and, by extension, his resulting figures — remain genuinely questionable.

Objections to Moreland’s Estimate

• Moreland assumed that the arazi figures represented only the gross cropped area — that is, land actually measured for cultivation. However, textual and statistical evidence has since shown that the arazi of the A’in was, in fact, a measured area recorded for revenue purposes more broadly, encompassing — besides currently cultivated land — fallow land, along with some cultivable and even uncultivable waste.
  • Moreover, such measurement was, by no means, carried out uniformly or completely across all regions of the empire.
• His further assumption that cultivated land per capita remained essentially unchanged between 1600 and 1900 is itself highly questionable.
• For the Deccan and South India, his adopted army-to-civilian ratio of 1:30 was similarly arbitrary, derived by direct comparison with pre–World War I modern states such as France and Germany — an inappropriate historical analogy.
  • This is compounded by the fact that Moreland’s own count of troop numbers in the Deccan kingdoms rested on nothing more than very general, imprecise statements made by contemporary European travellers.

Kingsley Davis’s Estimate

• Moreland’s method, in Kingsley Davis’s assessment, gave inadequate weight to the substantial areas of India lying outside his two primary regions of calculation.
  • To make appropriate allowance for these overlooked regions, Kingsley Davis, in his book The Population of India and Pakistan, revised Moreland’s estimate for the whole of India upward, to 125 million.
• While this particular modification is reasonable as far as it goes, it does not, of course, remove the more substantial methodological objections already raised against Moreland’s underlying approach.

Ashok Desai’s Estimate (Using Total and Per Capita Land Revenue)

• Ashok Desai compared the purchasing power of the lowest urban wages — first on the basis of prices and wages recorded in the A’in, and then against all-India average prices and wages of the early 1960s.
  • The yield and crop-rate figures provided by Abul Fazl offered Desai a means of measuring total food consumption in Akbar’s time, which he calculated at roughly one-fifth of the level prevailing in the 1960s.
• Desai then calculated average consumption levels at the end of the 16th century for each major agricultural commodity, using this data to work out the per capita area under various crops — which he then multiplied by prevailing revenue rates to estimate per capita land revenue.
  • Dividing the total jama (which Desai treated as equivalent to total land revenue) by this estimated per capita land revenue figure, Desai arrived at a population of approximately 65 million for the empire — a figure broadly confirming Moreland’s own estimate.

Objections to Desai’s Estimate

• According to Shireen Moosvi, since the prices and wages recorded in the A’in pertain specifically to the imperial camp — and thus apply chiefly to Agra (and possibly Lahore) — it is methodologically inappropriate to compare these directly against a modern all-India average.
  • In much the same way, the A’in’s standard crop-rate figures applied only to the immediate vicinity of Delhi, and are similarly not directly comparable to genuinely all-India yield figures.
• Moreover, Desai divided the empire’s total jama by his hypothetical per capita land-tax figure without adequately accounting for the likelihood that actual tax incidence varied considerably across different regions of the empire.
• A further questionable assumption was Desai’s treatment of the jama as equivalent to total land revenue — whereas it may, in fact, have represented only an estimate of net income from tax realisation by the jagirdars to whom that revenue had been assigned.
• Finally, the overall pattern of consumption in Akbar’s India was, in any case, not genuinely comparable to that of the 1960s.

Shireen Moosvi’s Estimate

• Despite the various objections raised against Moreland’s method, it remains legitimate, in principle, to use the extent of cultivation as a basis for estimating population — the arazi figures of the A’in can still provide a workable means of calculating the actual extent of cultivation in 1601.
• Making careful allowance for the cultivable and uncultivable waste included within the arazi figures, and establishing the true extent of measurement across different parts of the Mughal Empire, Shireen Moosvi, in her book The Economy of the Mughal Empire, concluded that:
  • The average agricultural holding in 1600 was 107% larger than the corresponding holding in 1900.
  • The total area under cultivation in the Mughal Empire in 1601 amounted to roughly 50–55% of the area under cultivation during the first decade of the 20th century.
    • This estimate finds further support in the independent extent-of-cultivation figures worked out by Irfan Habib, based on a detailed analysis of the number and size of villages across various regions of the empire during the 17th century.
  • The urban population constituted roughly 15% of the total population, meaning the rural population accounted for approximately 85% of the total.
• Moosvi essentially adopted the basic method originally suggested by Desai, but modified it substantially to address the objections raised against it.
• On this revised basis, Shireen Moosvi estimated the population of undivided India (within pre-1947 boundaries) in the 17th century at between 140 and 150 million, and the population of Akbar’s Empire specifically at 100 million.

Average Rate of Population Growth

• Taking the population of India to be roughly 145 million in 1601, and 225 million in 1871 — this latter figure being the total actually counted by the first census of 1872 — the compound annual rate of population growth for the period 1601 to 1872 works out to approximately 0.21% per annum.
• By comparison, the rate of population growth during the final three decades of the 19th century (1872–1901) stood at 0.37% per annum — a rate somewhat higher than the long-run figure deduced for 1601–1871, though not, in itself, a particularly high rate of growth by any standard.
• Compared against contemporary European population growth rates, the Mughal Empire was by no means exceptionally sluggish in its own demographic expansion.
  • The rate of 0.21% suggests, if anything, an economy that retained at least some room for genuine “national savings” and a net increase in food production over time — even if, on balance, this underlying growth remained genuinely slow.
  • This slowness likely stemmed from a combination of natural calamities, such as recurring famines, alongside man-made factors — of which the empire’s heavy revenue demand may well have been one significant contributor.
• The overall annual growth rate of roughly 0.2% for the period 1601–1801 suggests some genuinely interesting inferences about the character of the Mughal Indian economy.
  • If population growth is treated as a rough index of the underlying efficiency of a pre-capitalist economy, the Mughal economy cannot reasonably be deemed to have been absolutely static or stagnant — since its population still tended to grow by somewhere between 36% and 44% over the course of two centuries.

Composition of the Population: Rural and Urban

• Irfan Habib has attempted to estimate the size of the urban population on the basis of prevailing patterns of agricultural produce consumption.
  • While the Mughal ruling class tended to lay claim to roughly one-half of the total agricultural produce, not all of this claimed share was actually removed from the rural sector itself.
  • Assuming that approximately one-quarter of total agricultural produce ultimately reached the towns, and making due allowance for the somewhat higher proportion of raw material typically consumed within urban settings, Habib estimates the urban population at just over 15% of the total population.

Estimated Population in Various Towns

• Nizamuddin Ahmad, in his Tabaqat-i-Akbari (c. 1593), records that Akbar’s Empire contained some 120 major towns and 3,200 smaller townships.
  • Taking the total population of Akbar’s Empire at approximately 100 million, with the urban share at roughly 15% of this total, the average size of these 3,200 townships works out to approximately 5,000 inhabitants each.
• The Mughal Empire nonetheless contained a fair number of genuinely large towns. European travellers of the period recorded estimated populations for several major cities, as follows: