short notes on jagirdari crisis
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In the Mughal Empire, the king, being the owner of the land, distributed rights to tax farmers to collect taxes over particular territories. These tax farmers could exercise their right on an area for a temporary tenure after which they would be assigned a new area. These assignments were know in the Mughal empire as Jagir. The tax farmers were allowed to collect all the revenue generated from agriculture on the piece of land assigned to them but were expected to pay a certain fraction, as decided by the king, of the collection as owing allegiance to the king and the empire.
Since these assignments were temporary, the attitude of the assignees to the land under their jurisdiction could be summed up as follows:
The Jagirdars, Governors, and revenue contractors on their part reason in this manner: Why should the neglected state of this land create uneasiness in our minds? And why should we expend our own money and time to render it fruitful? We may be deprived of it in a single moment, and our exertions would benefit neither ourselves, not our children. Let us draw from the soil all the money we can, though the peasants should starve or abscond, and we should leave it a dreary wilderness when commanded to quit.
This, according to Francois Bernier, was at the root of the visible ruin of the agricultural land of the eastern states. Bernier’s theory has received much attention from the historians of the Mughal Empire. He has given a fairly accurate depiction of what the Jagirsystem is. The empire was divided intoJagirs or assignments held by nobles on account of their numerical ranks in the nobility. These ranks defined how much land a noble would be assigned and additionally, they also defined the size and composition of the military contingents that these Jagirdars were supposed to maintain. The Jagirs were constantly transferred, on average barely exceeding two to three years, to keep the Jagirdars from establishing their grounds in one area and hinder them from accumulating power or resources, which could be a threat to the Mughal Empire. There is a strongly held view among historians that, in the long run, this constant changing of the Jagirsis what led to the collapse of the Mughal Empire as an economic system, like Bernier suggested.
The Jagirdari system was initially designed to cope with a socio-political situation that was rapidly changing during the eighteenth century. In its prime, the system was able to keep in check the centrifugal forces represented by the zamindars and promoted a centralized policy. As time passed by, the old hierarchical society and the Jagirdarisystem were at odds with the rising social forces. There was a continuously deepening social crisis because of the significant increase of the number ofJagirdars and not enough Khalisa land for the king to offer to his noblemen. With increasing successful conquests and liaisons, the size of the nobility increased and with that, claimants ofJagir increased as well. This increase led to a division of the land and mansabswere now smaller than before. These smaller areas of lands also meant that smaller forces were held by the Jagirdarsand thus, zamindars became stronger in this scenario.
The Jagirdari system delegated, to the Jagirdars, the responsibility of collecting taxes from the zamindars.However, the number of zamindars was large and each one of them had their own personal forces of clan/caste followers and supporters. With the decreased sizes of army presented to each Jagirdar, he could no longer subdue the zamindars as well as the peasants by force. This caused the influence of imperial authority to decrease gradually as zamindars refused to cooperate with the system, looked for their own benefit and in some extreme cases even lead peasant uprisings. A decrease in the effectiveness of the imperial authority led to more rebellion, which further reduced the authority and the cycle continued.
Under the Mughal system the mansabdars were either paid their salary in cash or granted jagirs in lieu of that. But the treasury being exhausted the cash payment of salary was out of question the grant of jagir was also becoming increasingly difficult.For, though the number of mansabdars increased rapidly there was no increase in the availability of jagir in the same proportion. Thus there was the lack of sufficient jagirs required for the growing number of mansabdars awaiting grant of jagirs.The jagirdari crisis that was quite apparent during the end of the reign of Aurangzeb became so acute under the later Mughal emperors that the system itself ultimately collapsed. Again, with the collapse of the jagirdari system the process of decline of the Mughal Empire was also complete.