How were the Panchayats formed during sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? Explain their functions and authorities.

OR

Explain the origin, consolidation and the role of Zamindar in the villages. Were they an exploitative class?

Mughal village Panchayats and headmen regulated the rural society:

(i) The village panchayat was an assembly of elders, usually important people of the village with hereditary rights over their property.

(ii) In mixed-caste villages, the panchayat was usually a heterogeneous body. The decisions made by these panchayats were binding on the members.

(iii) The panchayat derived its funds from contributions made by individuals to a common financial pool.

(iv) Often these funds were also deployed in construction of a bund or digging a canal which peasants usually could not afford to do on their own.

(v) One important function of the panchayat was to ensure that caste boundaries among the various communities inhabiting the village were upheld.

(vi) Panchayats also had the authority to levy fines and inflict more serious forms of punishment like expulsions from the community.

(vii) The jati panchayats wielded considerable power in rural society and arbitrated civil disputes between members of different castes.

(viii) Village panchayat was regarded as the court of appeal that would ensure that the state carried out its moral obligations and guaranteed justice. The decision of the panchayat in

conflicts between “lower-caste” peasants and state officials or the local Zamindar could vary from case to case.

OR

Zamindars were landed proprietors who also enjoyed certain social and economic privileges by virtue of their superior status in rural society.

(i) Caste was one factor that accounted for the elevated status of Zamindars; another factor was that they performed certain services (khidmat) for the state.

(ii) The Zamindars held extensive personal lands termed milkiyat, meaning property. Milkiyat lands were cultivated for the private use of Zamindars, often with the help of hired or servile labour. The Zamindars could sell, bequeath or mortgage these lands at will.

(iii) Zamindars also derived their power from the fact that they could often collect revenue on behalf of the state, a service for which they were compensated financially. Control over military resources was another source of power. Most Zamindars had fortresses (qilachas) as well as an armed contingent comprising units of cavalry, artillery and infantry.

(iv) More important were the slow processes of zamindari consolidation, which are also documented in sources. These involved colonisation of new lands, by transfer of rights, by order of the state and by purchase.

(vi) These were the processes which perhaps permitted people belonging to the relatively “lower” castes to enter the rank of zamindars as zamindaris were bought and sold quite briskly in this period.

(vi) A combination of factors also allowed the consolidation of clan- or lineage-based zamindaris.

(vii) Although there can be little doubt that zamindars were an exploitative class, their relationship with the peasantry had an element of reciprocity, paternalism and patronage.

(viii)In a large number of agrarian uprisings which erupted in north India in the seventeenth century, zamindars often received the support of the peasantry in their struggle against the state.