. The Village Community The above account makes it clear that agricultural production involved the intensive participation and initiative of the peasantry. How did this affect the structure of agrarian relations in Mughal society? To find out, let us look at the social groups involved in agricultural expansion, and at their relationships and conflicts.
We have seen that peasants held their lands in individual ownership. At the same time they belonged to a collective village community as far as many aspects of their social existence were concerned. There were three constituents of this community – the cultivators, the panchayat, and the village headman ( muqaddam or mandal). .
Caste and the rural milieu Deep inequities on the basis of caste and other caste- like distinctions meant that the cultivators were a highly heterogeneous group. Among those who tilled the land, there was a sizeable number who worked as menials or agricultural labourers ( majur ). Despite the abundance of cultivable land, certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks and thus relegated to poverty. Though there was no census at that time, the little data that we have suggest that such groups comprised a large section of the village population, had the least resources and were constrained by their position in the caste hierarchy, much like the Dalits of modern India.
Such distinctions had begun permeating into other Ü Discuss... Identify the technologies and agricultural practices described in this section that appear similar to or different from those described in Chapter . Fig. .
An early nineteenth-century painting depicting a village in the Punjab Ü Describe what women and men are shown doing in the illustration as well as the architecture of the village.