A historian studying a seventeenth-century village in north India notes that land fit for cultivation was plentiful, and new fields were being cleared close by. Yet households from certain caste groups, who were given menial work, stayed poor while their neighbours prospered. No count of the village population survives from that time, so she has to work from a few scattered records to judge how many such households the village held and how they lived.
What do the little data available suggest about such groups in the villages of that time?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → A large section, with the least resources in the village
Option (1) A small section, housed mostly outside the village boundaries — Incorrect. Some menials, such as the halalkhoran in Muslim communities, were housed outside the village boundaries, but the groups were not small and this was not true of all of them.
Option (2) A shrinking section, as many of them rose in the caste hierarchy — Incorrect. Rising in the caste hierarchy fits intermediate castes such as the Ahirs, Gujars and Malis, who gained from cattle rearing and horticulture. Menial groups stayed tied to poverty.
Option (3) A large section, with the least resources in the village — Correct. The scattered data suggest that menial caste groups formed a large section of the village population and had the least resources, held down by their place in the caste hierarchy, much like the Dalits of modern India.
Option (4) A small section, found mainly in mixed-caste villages — Incorrect. Mixed-caste villages are where the panchayat was a heterogeneous body. The menial groups were not a small section, and they are not tied to such villages alone.
NCERT (2026-27): “2.1 Caste and the rural milieu “Despite the abundance of cultivable land, certain caste groups were assigned menial tasks and thus relegated to poverty. Though there was no census at that time, the little data that we have suggest that such groups comprised a large section of the village population, had the least resources and were constrained by their position in the caste hierarchy, much like the Dalits of modern India. …” |