Village Life in Mughal Times

CHAPTER 3 Village Life in Mughal Times In the times of the Mughals, India was considered Villages to be one of the more prosperous countries in the Below is a scene from a village in the Mughal world. Mughals, Rajputs and Afghans battled each period. It was painted during the time of Akbar. other just to lay claim over this prosperity. The wealth enabled jagirdars, zamindars and raja-maharajahs to lead lives of comfort and luxury, and enabled Mughal emperors to erect fabulous monuments such as the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal. With an eye on this prosperity, traders also came from Europe to India. However, the wealth of India did not simply fall out of the sky. The secret of the power of the Mughal empire and the wealth of the Mughal amirs lay in the fields - in the hard labour of the peasants. Mughal emperors and amirs partook of the yield of the peasants in the form of land tax. What kind of life did the peasants have? What were their homes like? What did they grow? How much tax did they pay? How’s ere they able to save? Come, let much w ughal read about the life of peasants in M times in this chapter. What can you find out from this picture about village houses, about people’s clothing, and about their lives and work? MUGHAL VILLAGES 27 What do these pictures that were painted in Mughal times tell you about how peasants lived then? 28 MUGHAL VILLAGES The villages had rich as well as poor people. This picture of a common peasant’s house was painted by an artist named Bichitra. What materials have been used to make this house? Most peasants lived in huts of wattle and daub (woven reeds or bamboo plastered with mud). Driven from their homes by war, famine, drought and oppression, the peasants would often have to quickly leave their houses and set up shelter in new places. A village hut in Mughal times Food Now let us take a look inside the hut of a Also many vegetables that you now eat common peasant. You would find only a few were not grown here in those days. utensils, and they would be made of clay. In those Till the Mughal times, potatoes, days, brass and bronze were very expensive and pumpkins, tomatoes, peas, chilly, aluminium and steel had not come into use. guavas, and custard apples were not The clay utensils would be used to cook khichdi grown at all in South Asia. These are all (iKcaD,I) of moong and rice, and to make rotis of fruits and vegetables from South and bajra or jowar. Along with this there might also North America which traders from be a little vegetable and ghee. Because milk was Europe brought to India towards the available aplenty in end of the Mughal period. those days, ghee was However, vegetables such as quite inexpensive. broadbeans, spinach, sweet potatoes, Apart from ghee, gourds of different kinds (ribbed, bitter, sesame (til) and bottle, etc.) ladyfingers, and brinjals mustard (sarson) oil were common. was also used. Common fruits were bananas, mangoes, jack-fruits, watermelons, ber, grapes Why would more ghee have been available in and pomegranates. those days? Discuss in your class. In those days chilly was not grown in Groundnuts were not grown in South Asia India. What do you think people would have used in its place? then, hence its oil was not available. MUGHAL VILLAGES 29 Cloth and Clothing If you look carefully at the picture on the top of the previous page you will spot a charkha (spinning wheel) hanging from the wall. In those days, the spinning wheel had begun to be used in each house. We mentioned before that the charkha came to India with the Turkish people. By the time of Akbar and Jahangir, people had widely adopted its use. Women would spin cotton into thread and the village weaver would weave it into cloth. Until this time, the people of India wore less cloth. But, after the coming of the spinning wheel greater quantities of cloth came to be worn. An artist named Miskin has made pictures like these of village people. They can be seen wearing many different kinds of clothes. Milkmen, peasants, jogis, children, women and many other kinds of people can be seen. Can you find someone with a spinning wheel? Can you distinguish between those who were very poor and those not so poor? Look carefully at the picture to spot them. Agriculture As is the case today, in Mughal times too the biggest problem in farming was that of irrigation. In those days, people had to make do with tanks, canals and wells. There were no motor pumps or electricity, as we have today. Therefore, much less land could be irrigated. Most of the land was unirrigated. Thus only the monsoon crop (kharif) could be grown in many places. 30 MUGHAL VILLAGES The Condition of the Peasants When the rains were sufficient and the crops were also good, the peasants would have enough to get by. But they would not be able to save anything for difficult times. Thus, whenever the rains were scanty and water sources dried up, the crops could not grow, and then the peasants would have absolutely nothing to live on. In times of famine, Since there were no chemical fertilizers or thousands of people would become victims of pesticides, or high yielding seeds, the yield was starvation and epidemics. Things would get so bad less than it is today. But still, the productivity of that people would start the land (the yield per hectare) was amongst the eating grass and leaves of highest in the world in those days. wild trees. Out of desperation, The soil in the river valleys of India is extremely many peasants rich. With their hard work and intelligence, the would sell peasants took advantage of this soil to raise two themselves and crops in a year. their children to the On the other hand, in the best fields in most wealthy. People would European countries farmers could grow only one leave their villages and or two crops in three years. The soil there was not wander in search of food. good enough to grow wheat two years in a row – Hundreds of villages so after growing one wheat crop each field would would thus be deserted be left untilled to fallow, or planted with oats in and slowly fall to ruins. rotation. There are descriptions of such terrible famines where Most parts of Europe have a heavy and deep soil. human beings were Such soil cannot be ploughed without a special, reduced to eating other strong kind of plough. But such ploughs were not human beings. made in those days. That is why the productivity of European soil was much lower than that of Such is the story of the peasants of the Mughal Indian soil. period - all the wealth was grown in their European travellers were astonished to see that not fields and all the only could Indian peasants grow two crops in a poverty resided in year in some areas, but also so many different kinds their homes. of crops could grow in the warm climate of India. In a single village, fifteen kinds of kharif (monsoon) crops and ten kinds of rabi (winter) crops might be grown. In addition to this, fruits, vegetables, A sick man attended by horn players, drawn and spices were also grown. There was hardly any in the Punjab hills other country in those days where such varied crops were grown in a single village. This productivity was indeed the basis of India’s famed prosperity. You must be thinking, how did this happen? After all, what happened to all the large However, even though they grew so many crops, harvests that peasants reaped? the peasants remained very poor. Many children would die of malnutrition and the common people lived under the threat of starvation. MUGHAL VILLAGES 31 Land tax A large part of the agricultural produce was taken By the year 1700, half the yield was being taken away in the form of tax. During the time of Akbar, from the peasants as tax. Can you imagine, after one third of the crop would be taken from the taxes had been paid and grain set aside for seeds, peasants as tax. But in the reign of Jahangir and what would be left for the needs of the peasant’s Shahjahan the burden of taxation kept increasing. families? Come, let us visit a village of those days. Let us get to know what the people underwent during the times of the emperors Akbar Shahjahan and Aurangzeb., Jahangir, The Story of a Village (Village Kararia, Suba Agra) Tax to be paid in cash, not in grain chaupal (square). The officer who had come from Bayana to fix the tax was called Puranmal. In the suba of Agra lay the village of Kararia. He said, “We have come here under orders from As villages went it was quite small - with about Muzaffar Khan and Raja Todarmal, the 80 peasant families. There were also 5 families ministers of Emperor Akbar. The emperor has of craftsmen, who made things of wood, iron changed the system of assessing and collecting and leather. Some craftsmen made clay pots tax for the whole empire. This year you will and some wove cloth. Most of the peasants pay the land-tax not in grain, but in money.” were Jats by caste, but there were also some Gujar peasants.

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