A Few Thoughts on Feudalism in India

(Lecturer, Kavali College, Kavali)

All mankind passed through several distinct stages in the development of the means of production. In the infancy of civilization, every group of mankind passed through the nomadic, the pastoral and the agricultural epochs. Clans and tribes, knit together by blood relationship, living by hunting and fishing, had common property in hunting grounds and in fishing waters and in places of shifting habitation; and they moved with their herds and flocks compelled by hostile tribes or by the diminution or scarcity of food and fodder. The growth in numbers of the tribe and the formation of large family units, after the disappearance of nomadism and promiscuity, and after the emergence of the field and the family, necessitated the settling down on fixed habitations, the villages. The transition from food-gathering to food-growing, from the stone and the arrow to the plough, was a step towards the formation of families which were undivided for generations together as social and economic units. The German Mark, the Russian Mir and the South Indian Urhad one common characteristic in ancient times, namely, the institution of common property in land for a number of blood-knit families who tilled the land in common, and who divided the yield more or less equally among all the related inhabitants of the settlement.

The idea of communal property was constantly referred to by Hindu law-givers and Hindu commentators: like Manu, Yajnavalkya, Apastamba, Gautama, Sayana, Savara and Jaimini. All of them expressed the view that the king was entitled to a share of the produce of the land in return for his protection of the life and the property of his people. The king was never empowered to sell the peasant’s land for default in the payment of his revenue. Broadly speaking, the distraint or the sale of land was alien to the Hindu code of property. (‘Land Tenures in the Madras Presidency’, by Soundararaja Iyengar, pages 11-12.) That land was originally owned by groups and not by individuals, and that individual proprietorship came into vogue at a very late period have been proved by the investigations both of Vinogradoff in Europe and of Sir Henry Maine in the East. The ancient village community in India was a patriarchal society consisting of co-proprietors of land. It was a brotherhood of peasants who acknowledged the tie of common ancestry, and who maintained the common management of arable fields and pasture lands for many generations.

It was tacitly understood that each head of a family unit, in the tribal brotherhood; should hold, in separate possession, the land on which his own family expended labour, and should enjoy the, results of the family’s labour, as long as he and his family contributed their share of revenue to the larger pool that was paid to the sovereign. It was inevitable that the tribal brotherhood should soon split into such units, these units having lived together generation after generation, till they became unwieldy for a single roof or for a single kitchen. Each family inherited a unit of ancestral property which it did not think at or once of getting separated from the property-units of the other families. It was partly time-honoured custom, and partly the consciousness of the economic advantage of collective labour. Sir Henry Maine said: “As a fact, however, a division rarely takes place even at the death of the father, and the property constantly remains undivided for several generations, though every member of every generation has a legal right to an undivided share in it.” (‘Ancient Law’ by Sir Henry Maine.) It could be stated as a general rule that each original village community was founded by a single assemblage of blood relations.

In spite of the admission of strangers into the community, and the division of labour arising out of the differentiation of occupational groups (which later hardened into castes), the tradition of common ancestry is still preserved in the memory of many a village community. Mountstuart Elphinstone, who studied South Indian communities in particular, expressed the view that, in a large number of villages, there were only single families of landholders who branched out into more members; their rights over lands were collectively held; and no landholder could sell or mortgage his rights without the previous consent of the entire village; and the share of an extinct family returned to the common stock. (‘History of India’, by Mountstuart Elphinstone, page 126.)

Here is an illuminating passage from one of the District Gazetteers of the Madras Presidency:

“Thus, the prevalence of co-ownership marked most of the village communities in ancient India. These proprietary brotherhoods had grown and expanded in North and South India more or less on a similar pattern. And it has been said that the Russian village was also organized just like the Indian brotherhood, but with one difference. In spite of the co-proprietorship of the village land, the separate rights of individuals continued indefinitely in India; but in a Russian village, after a given period, separate ownership was extinguished, and the land of the village was thrown together and redistributed among the families composing the community. The tradition of such redistribution and interchangeability of land-holdings has survived in many parts of Andhra till the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the form of the visapadior visabuddy; it has been handed down in the form of mirasitenure in Tamilnad. Sir Thomas Munro has described visapadias follows: ‘The land and rents were divided into sixteen shares. When the season of cultivation draws near, all the ryots of visapadivillages assemble to regulate their several rents for the year. They ascertain the amount of agricultural stock of each individual, and of the whole body, and the quantity of land to which it is adequate; and they divide it accordingly, giving each man a portion which he has the means of cultivating, and fixing his share of rent; and, whether his share be one or two sixteenths, he pays this proportion, whether the whole rent of the village be higher or lower than that of the last year.’ ” (The Gazetteer of Cuddapah, pages 146-147.)

The original organization of production was within the framework of the caste system which, historically, was the Indian version of a class structure, and which was part of Indian feudalism while it , lasted, as well as part of its sequel in history when feudalism began to split and burst. The privileges of some and the penalties of others prescribed in Manu Smriti clearly reveal the status once enjoyed by the privileged classes, vis-a-visthe producing classes in a feudal order. The Indian social scene still carries with it the historical residues of these privileges and penalties. The ruling castes–the Kshatriyas and the Brahmins–had rights over men and things, with little or no corresponding duties, comparatively speaking; while the producing classes–the Dasas, the Sudras, the Chandalas, the Pariahs, etc.,–had duties, with little or no corresponding rights, comparatively speaking. The caste system, which was the basis or the ground of production, consumption, exchange, and distribution in ancient Indian Society, certainly, for a long time, contributed to the development of the productive powers of society. It was a partnership of the Monarchy and the Church ina protracted phase of Indian feudalism. By supervised agriculture and supervised industry, in their primitive simplicity, the village community, in supporting Indian feudalism, supplied the surplus necessary for the state apparatus: for the maintenance of public works, and for the patronage of largely religious architecture, largely religious art, and largely religious literature. The hereditary division of labour, based on the inequitable Varnasrama Dharma, with its legal immutability aided by the immobility of social classes the autonomous and self-sufficient village communities in their seclusion, cherishing, and crushed under, the tenets of an unchanging Dharma; the outcastes, the possible relics of cross-breeding, suffering with mute resignation the disabilities of slave, serf and chandalarolled into one: these were the basic characteristics of the historically not-so-distant primitive Hindu society. The priest and the patriarch, the Brahmin and the Kshatriya, who lived on the surplus labour of the rural artisans and peasants, represented the main exploiting classes. To these were added, in succeeding chapters of Indian history, wherever Kshatriyas did not exist or Kshatriyas ceased to rule, rulers and leaders of men who belonged to the Sudra caste, who displaced or supplemented the Kshatriyas, who behaved exactly like the Kshatriyas, and who exploited the labour of others exactly like the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas. It was easier to displace or to supplement the Kshatriya than to displace or to supplement the Brahmin in the early feudal epochs, but that too was done in several patches of the Indian continent, and Sudra spiritual leaders held the souls of their fellow-men in fief, and joined the historical exploitation of the labour of others. This socio-religious fabric of caste ideology was the breeding ground of Indian feudalism in which men, of whichever caste, who could exploit the labour of others did not scruple to live by such exploitation.

Every ruling class has its own methods of creating an institution of servile labour for exploitation. Long before the outcastes had been brought to serfdom there was some type of slavery in ancient India. Dr. Winternitz says that, though Megasthenes emphatically states that there was no slavery in India, “both the Artha Sastra and the Dharma Sastras know different kinds of male and female slaves.” Law-givers like Apastamba, Gautama, Narada, Manu, Yajnavalkya, and Brihaspati recognised the existence of this institution, and laid down regulations for it. We have many references to slavery in the Jatakas, and in the Artha Sastra. Shri Radhakumud Mukherjee noted in his ‘Hindu Civilization’ the following types of slaves: a captive in war (dhvajahrita), a slave for food (bhaktadasa), a hereditary slave (grihaja), a slave acquired by purchase (krita), by gift (datrima), or by inheritance (paitrika), and a slave under debt (dandadasa). “Every slave, penal included, was allowed to work out his ransom... The sudrahelot had come into his own, under state control, to make large scale chattel slavery unnecessary for food production.” (‘An Introduction to the Study of Indian History’ by Kasent, page 120)

In the course of the development of Indian feudalism, the tribal chieftain (belonging to any of the castes) gained predominance over hundreds of villages, by virtue of military prowess or seniority of leadership in patriarchal society. By virtue of this ascendancy he acquired the right to a contribution from the wealth the villagers produced. Whether it was blackmail or tribute, he robbed the village communes of a goodly portion of their produce, and used it to perpetuate his ascendancy over them, and to wage wars on his rivals within and without his dominion. When larger areas came under his control he delegated his power to lesser chieftains or he farmed out the revenue to contractors. Instead of paying them monetary allowances for their services, which was not feasible in a predominantly agricultural economy, he simply distributed the authority to collect revenue and to retain a portion of it as remuneration. The vanquished chieftains were allowed to pay tribute which was a percentage of the revenue collected by them. Thus, these intermediaries who owed fiscal and military obligations to their super-lord became the overlords of areas and parts within the kingdom. The authority of these intermediaries was derivative and dependent on the fulfillment of certain prescribed conditions. So long as they conformed to the conditions and terms of the commission and transmitted the stipulated portion of the proceeds, they enjoyed their suzerainty over the village communities. If the intermediary found himself oppressed or humiliated, and was strong enough to challenge the super-lord, he raised the banner of revolt and carved out a kingdom of his own. Else he kept faith. There were innumerable feudal wars with their source in feudal ambitions. This process was in operation again and again, in this or that area of the Indian continent, right down to the times of the disintegration of the Mughal Empire.

In the pre-feudal period the village commune was an autonomous unit in which the upper castes, consisting of property-holders and priests, enjoyed self-government on a communal basis, and organized production and municipal services by the division of labour between various occupation groups. The village community had to admit, in the course of time, new-comers who were brought in either as agricultural labourers or for other essential services. The influx of strangers might have added to the differentiation of classes, because the older inhabitants enjoyed privileges while the new-comers had to accept duties as the only means of livelihood. The allocation of distinct functions to various groups led to hardening of the caste structure and the rigid preservation of the privileged castes from encroachment by the lower castes. These functions were given legal sanction of a quasi-religious nature in Manu Smriti and in other juridical codes of Hinduism.

Broadly speaking, there were three co-ordinate and simultaneous claims on the land: (1) the customary claims of the peasants in the village; (2) the delegated or derivative claims of the intermediary; and (3) the superior claims of the sovereign. This classification involves three types of conflicts: (1) between the super-lord and intermediary; (2) between the intermediary and the village; and (3) among the peasants themselves.

In England the king was both landlord and sovereign. And the barons were not only landlords but a combination of legislative, executive and judicial authority within the area of the feudal estate. There was no clear-cut distinction between taxes and rents. The position was no doubt gradually altered between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. From the signing of the Magna Carta there broke out a series of revolts which compelled the king to recognize the rights of the tenants as proprietors. The barons collectively fixed their cash payments to the king, and transformed the arbitrary rule of the sovereign into a system of common law, hammered out in the baronial struggles. The king ceased to be the landlord, and became only the sovereign who ruled with the consent of the barons. The rent charges were fixed as definite taxes payable according to contract. These collective, economic struggles of the barons gave rise to constitutional rights which, through the centuries, evolved into the fabric of the British Constitution.

The European manor was an organization which regulated the rights of the village, the rights of the separate peasant-holders and the rights of the overlord. The peasants were bound to the overlord through the obligations of personal service to him. He was sovereign of the estate, and took a personal interest in the agricultural process and regulated its operations constantly to his advantage. The rights of the overlords always came into conflict with the rights of the peasants. As a result of struggles like the Peasants’ Revolt, and by reason of the development of the money economy, personal services were commuted into money rents, and the serf became a tenant. The enclosure movement in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was another factor which transformed medieval agriculture in England. And thereby the rights and obligations of peasants underwent another transformation. The open field system was superseded, and the modern rural hierarchy of land-owners, tenants and agricultural labourers came into being.

Indian feudalism was based on a different conception of sovereign authority. The European monarch passed on to his barons power over persons as well as power over property in land, in return for allegiance and military services. This Roman conception of dominium was alien to India. The king here never created subordinate barons with proprietary rights over land, for, in theory, the king was not a supreme owner of land. He was the lord of the earth, not a proprietor of the soil. What he delegated was the revenue-collecting power. And even that power was not hereditary, for the intermediary could be removed at the king’s sweet will and pleasure. The king was not primus inter pares, and the baron was not a partner in sovereign authority. There could, therefore, be no baronial struggle, and the barons never combined to fight for their collective rights. The Indian baron could take up arms and repudiate loyalty to the king, and if he was powerful enough he could defeat royalty, and assume the insignia of royalty himself. Thus the conflict of interests, when it arose between the king and the intermediary overlords, did not produce constitutional and political developments. The Indian overlords could never oppose the sovereign, acting in unison as a coherent body, for their position had no legal sanction nor basis in contemporary and customary jurisprudence. They were of different grades, had no standing armies, rarely met together to discuss affairs of state, and had not sworn common allegiance to a single sovereign. The geographical vastness of the open Indian continent, compared to the small sea-girt area of England, and the incidence in Indian history of perpetual invasion of local sovereignty by external authority, compared to the seclusion of Britain after 1066 A. D., contributed to the absence of the factors of baronial solidarity and of monarchical continuity in India, and there was no appropriated power, which an evolving State could constitutionally inherit, consolidate and increase in India till the British left in 1947.

The European manor consisted of both the peasants’ lands and the overlords’ domain, and the overlord constantly depended upon the peasants and the serfs for various services in his domain. Indian feudalism, on the other hand, was merely fiscal and military. The peasant was not the direct serf of the overlord, and was not bound to offer all kinds of services at his beck and call. He was a member of the village community which enjoyed autonomy, and regulated the rights and obligations of its members, without outside interference, and the community was under the guidance of its village elders. When the overlord or revenue-farmer was oppressive in his demands, the peasants non-co-operated, and even left the village to settle down in a distant part of the country, for the land was abundant and their freedom of movement was not restricted by customary law. Normally, the overlord demanded a small share of the gross produce of the land, though, in times of war, the sovereign directed him to collect more, regardless of the interests of the peasants. The revenue-farmers had their own land which was cultivated by hired labour and by slaves, for the overlord had to be sure of an uninterrupted supply of food grains in times of famine, drought or other calamity. And when the sovereign required land for his own purposes he bought it from the villagers. “That the ownership of the soil was not vested in the sovereign is proved by a variety of arguments. One of these is remarkable, being drawn from the fact that the emperors purchased land when they wanted it. Akbar purchased land for the forts of Akbarabad and Illahabad; Shah Jahan for the fort of Shahjahanabad; and Alamgir for the fort of Aurangabad and for mosques. When the jagirdars got possession they paid milkhanato the zamindars. There is a native saying that the land belongs to the zamindar and the revenue to the king. And, according to Mahommedan law, the sovereign has a right of property in the tribute or revenue; but he who has tribute from the land has no property in the land.” (‘Field and Holding,’ page 741)

Individual family claims and obligations were determined on customary lines, and the collective or co-operative village had to part with a big fraction of the final produce of the soil to the overlords or revenue-farmers who exercised their power by virtue of their military force. Though this super-imposition of a military hierarchy over groups of villages was common to both European and Indian feudalism, India did not witness those economic and political conflicts between baron and king, or between baron and peasant. Most of the conflicts in Indian history had for their objects the exercise of rights over the village, not the exercise of rights within the village. Unlike European overlords who enforced their decrees in regard to large-scale farming, enclosure, etc., and in the enforcement expropriated the peasants, the chief interest of the Indian overlords was only for a lager share of the products of the soil.

Until the introduction of the ryotwarisystem by the East India Company in the nineteenth century land in India was not a commodity with a saleable value, for private property in land was rarely desired or accumulated by the peasants due to very high assessment. Land could become saleable only if it yielded a surplus or rent to the proprietor after meeting the cost of cultivation. The assessment in India was always high, and most of the peasants lived at a bare subsistence level; “In the northern portion of the (Madras) Presidency, comprising the Telugu districts, there is no reason to suppose that the conditions were originally different from those that existed in other parts of the Madras Presidency. These northern districts were the first to be occupied by the Mahommedans, and formed the seat of their government, and, on account of the high taxation levied by them, the lands lost their saleable value; and the continuance of that state for centuries effaced all traces of disposition of lands from the memory of men. Therefore, at the time when those districts came first under the power of the English, no traces of sale or other disposition of lands could be found. (‘Mirasi Papers’, page 338)

The East India Company started by becoming a revenue-farmer in Bengal and in Andhra in the eighteenth century. And this power was subsequently expanded into full sovereignty by force of arms. The Company transformed the revenue-farmers or zamindars into hereditary landlords. In accordance with English laws and usages, the Company conferred proprietary rights over revenue-farmers and former intermediaries. The next step was to introduce village settlements and individual assessments of revenue. Individual pattasconferring proprietary rights were granted to the ryots, and land thus became a marketable commodity. The village community which was a co-operative union of peasants was broken up, the functions of the village panchayator sabhaof elders were usurped by the British bureaucracy. Even the services of the village functionaries came to be paid in monetary allowances instead of mirasior manyam. Status was superseded by contract. What was once held rigid by custom was dissolved by money. And the village community, broken up and disorganized, was thrown headlong into the melting pot of bourgeois economy, and became a pitiable victim of the depredations of English merchants and their Indian hirelings.

The attempt of Free India today to revive Panchayats and to create co-operative farms is, in one sense, an attempt to retrace history. There is disaster in it in that sense, if it amounts to a reverter to feudalism just around the corner. The validity of the plea of decentralisation of power arises only after the valid centralisation or concentration of power in a coherent modern statehood, after it has eliminated not only all traces of feudalism in the countryside but also all possibility of lingering exploitation, feudal or capitalistic, in the villages. Decentralised power in the villages, without an earlier centralisation or concentration of power in coherent statehood, and without the elimination of, or without absolute control over, exploiting elements in the villages, means only power to the exploiters or power in the hands of a mere bureaucracy. Panchayats and co-operative farms will then end up as fine bureaucratic machinery in the firm grip of the exploiters of the countryside, or in the uncertain grip of an untrained bureaucracy. Decentralisation of power, without first achieving power from such exploiters or power over such exploiters, and without first settling the identity or the character of those who are to wield it, and blindly hoping for the best, is to plunge into feudalism after fashioning a Constitution which is gallant only in the reading of it.