Practicing Success

Target Exam

CUET

Subject

History

Chapter

Medieval India: Peasants, Zamindars and the State

Question:

Which of the followings king said that jungles provided a good defence "behind which the people of the pargana become stubbornly rebellious and pay no taxes".

Options:

Babur

Jahangir

Sher Shah

Aurangzeb

Correct Answer:

Babur

Explanation:

The correct answer is Option 1 - Babur

There was more to rural India than sedentary agriculture. Apart from the intensively cultivated provinces in northern and north-western India, huge swathes of forests – dense forest (jangal) or scrubland (kharbandi) – existed all over eastern India, central India, northern India (including the Terai on the Indo-Nepal border), Jharkhand, and in peninsular India down the Western Ghats and the Deccan plateau. Though it is nearly impossible to set an all-India average of the forest cover for this period, informed conjectures based on contemporary sources suggest an average of 40 per cent.

For the state, the forest was a subversive place – a place of refuge (mawas) for troublemakers. Once again, we turn to Babur who says that jungles provided a good defence “behind which the people of the pargana become stubbornly rebellious and pay no taxes”.