Consider the following statements about Karl Marx's picture of villag…

Consider the following statements about Karl Marx's picture of village India and the rural society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:

(A) Marx regarded the village communities presided over by the imperial court as a stagnant system.
(B) Rural society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries showed considerable social and economic differentiation.
(C) Marx described the village communities as internally divided by sharp inequality.
(D) The big zamindars and the untouchable landless labourers stood at the two ends of the rural scale.

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 1

The correct answer is Option (1) → A, B and D only

(A) Marx regarded the village communities presided over by the imperial court as a stagnant system. — Correct. In Marx's Asiatic mode of production, the court took the surplus and left the villages alone, and this was seen as a stagnant system.

(B) Rural society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries showed considerable social and economic differentiation. — Correct. Historians find that rural society had wide differences of wealth and status, so Marx's picture was far from true.

(C) Marx described the village communities as internally divided by sharp inequality. — Incorrect. Marx saw the villages as internally egalitarian, that is, equal within themselves. Inequality is what historians later found.

(D) The big zamindars and the untouchable landless labourers stood at the two ends of the rural scale. — Correct. Big zamindars with superior rights were at one end and untouchable landless labourers at the other.

NCERT (2026-27): “6.1 The question of landownership …
This idea was further developed as the concept of the Asiatic mode of production by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century. He argued that in India (and other Asian countries), before colonialism, surplus was appropriated by the state. This led to the emergence of a society that was composed of a large number of autonomous and (internally) egalitarian village communities. The imperial court presided over these village communities, respecting their autonomy as long as the flow of surplus was unimpeded. This was regarded as a stagnant system. However, as we will see (Chapter 8), this picture of rural society was far from true. In fact, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rural society was characterised by considerable social and economic differentiation. At one end of the spectrum were the big zamindars, who enjoyed superior rights in land and, at the other, the “untouchable” landless”

“labourers. In between was the big peasant, who used hired labour and engaged in commodity production, and the smaller peasant who could barely produce for his subsistence.”