Read the passage and answer the question:
An excerpt from Bernier's description of the peasantry in the countryside:
Of the vast tracts of country constituting the empire of Hindustan, many are little more than sand, or barren mountains, badly cultivated and thinly populated. Even a considerable portion of the good land remains untilled for want of labourers; many of whom perish in consequence of the bad treatment they experience from Governors. The poor people, when they become incapable of discharging the demands of their rapacious lords, are not only often deprived of the means of subsistence, but are also made to lose their children, who are carried away as slaves. Thus, it happens that the peasantry, driven to despair by so excessive a tyranny, abandon the country.
According to Bernier, the condition of peasants under Mughals was:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Miserable
Bernier paints a dark picture of the peasantry. Good land lay untilled for want of labourers, many of whom perished from the bad treatment of the Governors; the poor lost their means of subsistence and even their children; and the peasants, driven to despair by so excessive a tyranny, abandoned the country. Their condition was miserable.
NCERT (2026-27): “6.1 The question of landownership … Owing to crown ownership of land, argued Bernier, landholders could not pass on their land to their children. So they were averse to any long-term investment in the sustenance and expansion of production. The absence of private property in land had, therefore, prevented the emergence of the class of ‘improving’ landlords (as in Western Europe) with a concern to maintain or improve the land. It had led to the uniform ruination of agriculture, excessive oppression of the peasantry and a continuous decline in the living standards of all sections of society, except the ruling aristocracy.…”
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