Discuss the features of the land revenue system under the Mughal State.
Answers
The Revenue administration under the first two Mughal rulers—Babur and Humayun—continued to operate as it was under the Sultans of Delhi. Babur was so much engrossed in the various wars during his four years of rule that he could hardly get any time to devote to the revenue affairs.
The central feature of the agrarian system under the Mughals was the alienation from the peasant of his surplus produce (produce over and above the subsistence level) in the form of land revenue which was the main source of state's income. Early British administrators regarded the land revenue as rent of the soil because they had a notion that the king was the owner of the land. Subsequent studies of Mughal India have shown that it was a tax on the crop and was thus different from the land revenue as conceived by the British. Abul Fazl in his Ain-i Akbari justifies the imposition of taxes by the state saying that these are the remuneration of sovereignty, paid in return for protection and justice.
The Persian term for land revenue during the Mughal rule was mal and mal wajib. Kharaj was not in regular use.
The process of land revenue collection has two stages:
(a) Assessment (tashkhis/jama)
(b) Actual collection (hasil).
Assessment was made to fix the state demand. On the basis of this demand, actual collection was done separately for kbarif and rabi crops.