Identify the term used for North-Bengal’s class of ‘rich-peasants’ in the early nineteenth-century?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Jotedars
Option (1) Adhiyars — Incorrect. Adhiyars were sharecroppers who cultivated the land of the jotedars. They brought their own ploughs, laboured in the field and handed over half the produce to the jotedars after the harvest; they were poor cultivators, not rich peasants.
Option (2) Jotedars — Correct. Francis Buchanan’s survey of the Dinajpur district in North Bengal describes a class of rich peasants known as jotedars. By the early nineteenth century they had acquired vast areas of land and controlled local trade and moneylending.
Option (3) Bargadars — Incorrect. Bargadars is another name for the same sharecroppers (adhiyars or bargadars) who worked the jotedars’ land for half the produce.
Option (4) Zamindars — Incorrect. Zamindars were the landholders who paid revenue to the Company under the Permanent Settlement. Many of them were facing a crisis at the end of the eighteenth century, at the very time the jotedars, a group of rich peasants, were consolidating their position in the villages.
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.…” |