A group of rich peasants in North Bengal were known as ________.

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 1

The correct answer is Option (1) → Jotedars

Option (1) Jotedars — Correct. Francis Buchanan’s survey of the Dinajpur district gives a vivid description of this class of rich peasants known as jotedars. By the early nineteenth century they had acquired vast areas of land and controlled local trade as well as moneylending.

Option (2) Zamindars — Incorrect. The zamindars were the landholders who were facing a crisis at the end of the eighteenth century. The rich peasants were a different group, who were consolidating their position in the villages at that very time.

Option (3) Adhiyars — Incorrect. Adhiyars were sharecroppers. They cultivated a large part of the jotedars’ land, bringing their own ploughs, and handed over half the produce to the jotedars after the harvest.

Option (4) Bargadars — Incorrect. Bargadars was another name for the same sharecroppers (adhiyars or bargadars) who worked the jotedars’ land, not for the rich peasants themselves.

Note: A same/similar question was asked in CUET (UG) in the papers below.

2026	2025	2024	2023	2022
–	19-05 S1	–	05-06 S1 06-06 S1	16-07 S1*

* A similar question.

NCERT (2026-27): “1.4 The rise of the jotedars … While many zamindars were facing a crisis at the end of the eighteenth century, a group of rich peasants were consolidating their position in the villages. In Francis Buchanan’s survey of the Dinajpur district in North Bengal we have a vivid description of this class of rich peasants known as jotedars. By the early nineteenth century, jotedars had acquired vast areas of land – sometimes as much as several thousand acres. They controlled local trade as well as moneylending, exercising immense power over the poorer cultivators of the region. A large part of their land was cultivated through sharecroppers (adhiyars or bargadars) who brought their own ploughs, laboured in the field, and handed over half the produce to the jotedars after the harvest.…”