![Salimullah](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Salimullah.jpg)
A zamindar (
Hindustani:
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...
: , ;
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
: , ) in the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
was an autonomous or semiautonomous
ruler
A ruler, sometimes called a rule, line gauge, or scale, is a device used in geometry and technical drawing, as well as the engineering and construction industries, to measure distances or draw straight lines.
Variants
Rulers have long ...
of a
province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...
. The term itself came into use during the reign of
Mughals
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
and later the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
had begun using it as a native synonym for “estate”. The term means ''
land owner
Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
'' in
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
. Typically hereditary, from whom they reserved the right to collect tax on behalf of imperial courts or for military purposes.
During the period of
British colonial rule in India many wealthy and influential zamindars were bestowed with princely and royal titles such as ''
maharaja
Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king".
A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, an ...
'' (
great king
Great king, and the equivalent in many languages, refers to historical titles of certain monarchs, suggesting an elevated status among the host of kings and princes. This title is most usually associated with the '' shahanshah'' (shah of shahs ...
), ''
raja
''Raja'' (; from , IAST ') is a royal title used for South Asian monarchs. The title is equivalent to king or princely ruler in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
The title has a long history in South Asia and Southeast Asia, being attested f ...
/
rai
RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (; commercially styled as Rai since 2000; known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane) is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many ter ...
'' (king) and ''
nawab
Nawab (Balochi language, Balochi: نواب; ar, نواب;
bn, নবাব/নওয়াব;
hi, नवाब;
Punjabi language, Punjabi : ਨਵਾਬ;
Persian language, Persian,
Punjabi language, Punjabi ,
Sindhi language, Sindhi,
Urd ...
''.
During the
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
, zamindars belonged to the nobility and formed the ruling class. Emperor
Akbar
Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (25 October 1542 – 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar the Great ( fa, ), and also as Akbar I (), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Hum ...
granted them
mansabs and their ancestral domains were treated as
jagir
A jagir ( fa, , translit=Jāgir), also spelled as jageer, was a type of feudal land grant in the Indian subcontinent at the foundation of its Jagirdar (Zamindar) system. It developed during the Islamic rule era of the Indian subcontinent, start ...
s. Some zamindars who were
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
by religion and
brahmin
Brahmin (; sa, ब्राह्मण, brāhmaṇa) is a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society. The Brahmins are designated as the priestly class as they serve as priests (purohit, pandit, or pujari) and religious teachers (guru ...
or
kayastha or
kshatriya
Kshatriya ( hi, क्षत्रिय) (from Sanskrit ''kṣatra'', "rule, authority") is one of the four varna (social orders) of Hindu society, associated with warrior aristocracy. The Sanskrit term ''kṣatriyaḥ'' is used in the con ...
by caste were converted into
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
s by the Mughals. During the colonial era, the
Permanent Settlement
The Permanent Settlement, also known as the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, was an agreement between the East India Company and Bengali landlords to fix revenues to be raised from land that had far-reaching consequences for both agricultural met ...
consolidated what became known as the ''zamindari system''. The British rewarded supportive zamindars by recognising them as princes. Many of the region's
princely state
A princely state (also called native state or Indian state) was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Raj, British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, ...
s were pre-colonial zamindar holdings elevated to a greater protocol. The British also reduced the land holdings of many pre-colonial princely states and chieftaincy, demoting their status to a zamindar from previously higher ranks of nobility.
The system was abolished during
land reform
Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...
s in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1950, India in 1951 and West Pakistan in 1959.
The zamindars often played an important role in the regional histories of the subcontinent. One of the most notable examples is the 16th-century confederation formed by twelve zamindars in the
Bhati
Bhati is a clan of Rajputs
History
The Bhatis reportedly originated in Mathura through a common ancestor named Bhati, who was a descendant of Pradyumn. According to the seventeenth-century Nainsi ri Khyat, the Bhatis after losing Mathura ...
region (
Baro-Bhuyan
The Baro-Bhuyans (or ''Baro-Bhuyan Raj''; also ''Baro-Bhuians'' and Baro-Bhuiyans) refers to the confederacies of soldier-landowners in Assam and Bengal in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. The confederacies consisted of loose ...
s), which, according to the
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
and
Ralph Fitch
Ralph Fitch (1550 – 1611) was a gentleman merchant of London and one of the earliest British travellers and merchants to visit Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, south Asia & Southeast Asia. At first he was no chronicler but he di ...
, earned a reputation for successively repelling Mughal invasions through naval battles. The zamindars were also patrons of the arts. The
Tagore family
The Tagore family (also spelled as ''Thakur''), with over three hundred years of history,Deb, Chitra, pp 64–65. has been one of the leading families of Calcutta, India, and is regarded as one of the key influencers during the Bengali Renaissa ...
produced India's first Nobel laureate in literature in 1913,
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...
, who was often based at his estate. The zamindars also promoted
neoclassical and
Indo-Saracenic
Indo-Saracenic architecture (also known as Indo-Gothic, Mughal-Gothic, Neo-Mughal, or Hindoo style) was a revivalist architectural style mostly used by British architects in India in the later 19th century, especially in public and government ...
architecture.
Mughal era
![Mehtab Chand of Burdwan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Mehtab_Chand_of_Burdwan.jpg)
When Babur conquered North India, there were many autonomous and semiautonomous rulers who were known locally as Rai, Raja, Rana, Rao, Rawat, etc. while in the various Persian chronicles they were referred as zamindars and . They were vassals who ruled, mostly hereditarily, over their respective territories. They commanded not only a considerable part of the economic resources of the empire but also military power. After the conquest of Hindustan, Babur informs us that one-sixth of its total revenues came from the territories of the chiefs. He writes: "The revenue of the countries now held by me (1528 A.D.) from Bhira to Bihar, is fifty-two crores as will be known in detail. Eight or nine crores of this are from the parganas of rais and the rajas who have submitted in the past (to the
Sultans of Delhi), receive allowance and maintenance."
According to Arif Qandhari, one of the contemporary historian of Akbar's reign, there were around two to three hundred rajas or rais and zamindars who ruled their territory from strong forts under the emperor's suzerainty. Each of these rajas and zamindars commanded an army of their own generally consisting of their clansmen and the total numbers of their troops as Abul Fazl tells us, stood at forty four lakhs comprising 384,558 cavalry, 4,277,057 infantry; 1863 elephants, 4260 guns and 4500 boats.
During the Mughal Era there was no clear difference between the princely states and zamindari estates. Even the ruling autonomous chiefs of princely states were called zamindars.
Moreland was one of the first historian who draw our attention to the importance of zamindars in medieval India. He defines zamindars as "vassal chiefs". He points out that there were areas under direct control of Mughals where there were no zamindars and then there were territories of the vassal chiefs who had autonomy over their state, but were subjugated by the Mughals and paid a tribute/ nazarana to the Mughal Emperor. However Irfan Habib in his book Agrarian system of Mughal India, divided the zamindars into two categories : the autonomous chiefs who enjoyed "sovereign power" in their territories and the ordinary zamindars who exercised superior rights in land and collected land revenue and were mostly appointed by the Mughals.
These people were known as the zamindars (intermediaries)
and they collected revenue primarily from the
Ryot
Ryot (alternatives: raiyat, rait or ravat) was a general economic term used throughout India for peasant cultivators but with variations in different provinces. While zamindars were landlords, raiyats were tenants and cultivators, and served as hi ...
s (
peasant
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...
s) The zamindari system was more prevalent in the north of India because Mughal influence in the south was less apparent.
Historian
S. Nurul Hasan divided the zamindars into three categories: (i) The Autonomous Rai/ Rajas or Chiefs, (ii) the intermediary zamindars and (iii) the primary zamindars.
British era
The
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
established themselves in India by first becoming zamindars of three villages of Calcutta, Sultani and Govindpur. Later they acquired the 24-Parganas and in 1765 got control of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Later in 1857 the British Crown was established as the sovereign.
During Mughal Era the zamindars were not proprietors. They used to engage in wars and used to plunder neighbouring kings. So they never looked after the improvements in their land. The East India Company under
Lord Cornwallis
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, (31 December 1738 – 5 October 1805), styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as the Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army general and official. In the United S ...
, realising this, made Permanent Settlement in 1793 with the zamindars and made them proprietors of their land in return for a fixed annual rent and left them independent for the internal affairs of their estates. This Permanent Settlement created the new zamindari system as we know it today. After 1857 the army of the majority of zamindars were abolished with exception of a small number of force for policing/digwari/kotwali in their respective estates. If the zamindars were not able to pay the rent until sunset, parts of their estates were acquired and auctioned. This created a new class of zamindars in the society. As the rest of India came later under the control of the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
(EIC), different ways were implemented in different provinces to in regards to the ruling authorities in the region to get them to accede to Company authority.
The British generally adopted the extant zamindari system of revenue collection in the north of the country. They recognised the zamindars as landowners and proprietors as opposed to Mughal government and in return required them to collect taxes. Although some zamindars were present in the south, they were not so in large numbers and the British administrators used the
ryotwari
The ryotwari system was a land revenue system in British India introduced by Thomas Munro, which allowed the government to deal directly with the cultivator ('ryot') for revenue collection and gave the peasant freedom to cede or acquire new land ...
(cultivator) method of collection, which involved selecting certain farmers as being land owners and requiring them to remit their taxes directly.
The
Zamindars of Bengal
The Zamindars of Bengal were zamindars (hereditary landlords) of the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent (now divided between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal). They governed an ancient system of land ownership.
The Bengali ...
were influential in the development of Bengal. They played pivotal part during the
Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...
.
The British continued the tradition of bestowing both royal and noble titles to zamindars who were loyal to the paramount. The title of Raja, Maharaja, Rai Saheb, Rai Bahadur, Rao, Nawab, Khan Bahadur were bestowed to princely state rulers and to many zamindars from time to time. According to an estimate in the Imperial Gazetteer of India, there were around 2000 ruling chiefs holding the royal title of Raja and Maharaja which included the rulers of princely states and several large chiefdoms. This numbers increases tenfold if zamindar/ jagirdar chiefs with other non royal but noble title are taken into count.
Accession
Unlike the autonomous or frontier chiefs, the hereditary status of the zamindar class was circumscribed by the Mughals, and the heir depended to a certain extent on the pleasure of the sovereign. Heirs were set by descent or a times even adoption by religious laws. Under the British Empire, the zamindars were to be subordinate to
the Crown
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...
and not act as hereditary lords, but at times family politics was at the heart of naming an heir. At times, a cousin could be named an heir with closer family relatives present; a lawfully wedded wife could inherit the zamindari if the ruling zamindar named her as an heir.
Abolition
The zamindari system was mostly abolished in independent India soon after its creation with the
First Amendment of the Constitution of India
The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, enacted in 1951, made several changes to the Fundamental Rights provisions of the Indian constitution. It provided means to restrict freedom of speech and expression, validation of ''zamindari'' abolit ...
which amended the
right to property as shown in Articles 19 and 31.
In Bangladesh, the
East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950
The East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950 (also known as the East Pakistan Estate Acquisition Act 1950) was a law passed by the newly formed democratic Government of East Bengal in the Dominion of Pakistan (present day Bangladesh) ...
had a similar effect of ending the system. Zaminder has also played a crucial role in the life of small field worker and small farmers who have less land. Zaminder lent some money to them in their difficult situations with high interest , so they can not pay them back and they become their servant for rest of their life. Due to Zamindari system small farmers could not get financially strong.
In global health
Critics have likened the discipline of global health to a feudal structure where individuals and institutions in high-income nations act as zamindars over health issues of low-and-middle income nations, thus sustaining the imperial nature of global health.
See also
* Koli rebellions
*
Indian feudalism
Indian feudalism refers to the feudal society that made up India's social structure until the Mughal Dynasty in the 16th century. The Guptas and the Kushans played a major role in the introduction and practice of feudalism in India, and are exam ...
*
Indian honorifics
Indian honorifics are honorific titles or appendices to names used in the Indian subcontinent, covering formal and informal social, commercial, and religious relationships. These may take the form of prefixes, suffixes or replacements.
Native hon ...
*
Jagirdar
*
Ghatwals and Mulraiyats
Ghatwali was a feudal tenure/'' jagir'' for quasi-military services, only found in the district of Santhal Parganas and some parts of Munger. The ruling chiefs of these ''jagir'' were known as Ghatwals. They were responsible for maintaining safety ...
*
Mankari
Mankari (Mānkari or Maankari) is a hereditary title used by Maratha nobles and troops from the Indian subcontinent who held land grants, and cash allowances. They held an official position at the Darbar (court) and were entitled to certain cer ...
*
Maratha titles
The following list includes a brief about the titles of nobility or orders of chivalry used by the Marathas of India and by the Marathis/Konkanis in general.
Titles used by the Maratha Royals
The titles used by royalty, aristocracy and nobili ...
*
Thakur
*
Zamindars of Bihar
The Zamindars of Bihar were the autonomous and semi-autonomous rulers and administrators of the Mughal subah of Bihar and later during British rule. The zamindars of Bihar were numerous and could be divided into small, medium and large depend ...
*
List of amendments of the Constitution of India
As of October 2021, there have been 105 amendments of the Constitution of India since it was first enacted in 1950.
There are three types of amendments to the Constitution of India of which second and third type of amendments are governed by ...
Notes
References
{{Reflist, 2
Mughal Empire
Titles in India
Titles in Bangladesh
Indian feudalism
Feudalism in Pakistan
Feudalism in Bangladesh
Zam