A revenue official in a seventeenth-century village of the Mughal empire makes a list of the people who work its fields. He finds that they are far from alike. Some families cultivate their own plots with their own ploughs and bullocks. Others own almost nothing and work on the fields of others for a small share of grain or a daily wage. A student reading his notes years later wants to place these different people within what historians know about rural society in this period.
What made the cultivators of the kind described in the passage a highly heterogeneous group?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Deep inequities based on caste and castelike distinctions
Option (1) The settling of migrants from Central Asia in villages — Incorrect. Migrants did come into Mughal India. The sharp differences among cultivators came from caste inequities.
Option (2) Different revenue rates fixed for different villages — Incorrect. Revenue rates did vary by land and area. Within one village, though, the deep divisions among cultivators came from caste.
Option (3) Deep inequities based on caste and castelike distinctions — Correct. Deep inequities on the basis of caste and other castelike distinctions made the cultivators a highly heterogeneous group. Some held land.
Option (4) Differences in the crops grown in wet and dry zones — Incorrect. Crops differed between wet and dry zones. That explains variety in farming.
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. …” |