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Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707, Second Revised
Edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. xvi+547, Rs. 545/-.


When the first edition of the book under review appeared in 1963, it was a historic event
for Mughal studies. It has been out of print and a new edition was long overdue, revised
or otherwise. It was one of the first works to have moved beyond the narrow confines of
dynastic history or sectarian typecasting. Satish Chandras Parties and Politics at the
Mughal Court preceded Habibs monograph by four years. However, Chandras work
concerned itself exclusively with the later phase of the Mughal period whereas Habib set
for himself a more ambitious agenda. The strength of Habibs seminal work lay in its
attempt to look into the entire agrarian system through an investigation of Mughal land
revenue administration, agrarian economy and social structure spanning the period from
1556 to 1707. The wealth of source materials, particularly administrative manuals,
revenue records and court chronicles that went into the making of the text, helped enforce
a new rigour into medieval Indian studies. Indeed, it set the tone for much of the writing
in the field for the next twenty-five years or so.

Much water and blood has flowed through Mughal historiography since. Particularly
contested are Habibs ideas of extreme centralization of power in the hands of an
absolutist monarch, the self-sufficiency of the village economy and the agrarian crisis of
the eighteenth century. However, Habib does not take note of these challenges in this
revised edition. If anything, he is even more assertive in his conclusions. This is
unfortunate. For, the inspiring force of The Agrarian System was not just its wealth of
information but also the tentative tenor of the authors formulations. The contradictions
in the revised edition stand more exposed than in the original.

To be sure, a number of new sources have been harnessed in this edition. While the
sequence and titles of the chapters remain the same, the chapter on the village community
has been modified and enlarged considerably. A more nuanced view of the village
community has been attempted but over all this does not alter the chief arguments of the
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book. However, the author fails to do justice to the variety of information that he has
collected. Thus, his conclusion that the unity and cohesion of the Mughal ruling class
found its practical expression in the absolute power of the emperor (p. 366) cannot be
reconciled with his own admission that the imperial regulationsleft a considerable
field of discretion to the jagirdars (p. 369). In the same context, he even concedes that
the regulations themselves could also be simply violated or evaded in practice (p.
369). If the jagirdars defied the imperial authority with impunity, the local chiefs were
free to levy cesses and duties on trade passing through their territories at rates fixed by
themselves. Their methods of revenue administration did not necessarily follow the
regulations laid down by the imperial government (p. 225). Again this cannot simply be
dismissed especially when one considers that the extent of the territory ruled by chiefs
and princelings was not by any means negligible (p. 229). This is an astonishing hole in
his argument because the whole idea of the centralization of power rests on the
hypothesis that the mansabdars were completely dependent on the will of the
emperor(p. 366) and that the local potentates could be controlled. The material basis of
the states enormous strength apparently derived from its ability to skim off the entire
agrarian surplus. Yet, the author is keen on maintaining that the land revenue was a
retrogressive tax (pp. 136 and 232). This is a clearly irreconcilable stand to take unless
one is prepared to define surplus very differently for the different rural classes. If
surplus is taken to mean, as Habib does, everything beyond the subsistence need of the
peasants, then the revenue regime must be progressive enough to be able to take away the
entire agrarian surplus. For, the rich will have much more to spare than the poor.

Similarly, the evidence about a piece of cultivated land being sold[by]two
individual peasants (p. 151) does not stop him from observing elsewhere that the peasant
was a semi-serf, not a free agent. And his right, such as it was, was seldom saleable (p.
134). Part of the problem in the text emerges from the authors indiscriminate use of
evidences, culled from sources far removed from each other in time, space and genre.
This is followed by an attempt to weave through an all India pattern for the entire length
of the period from mid sixteenth century to early eighteenth century. His obsession with
all India pattern probably emanates from an a priori assumption that the state and its
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regulations must be the chief determinant of all aspects of social, economic and political
life under the Mughals. Thus, even while reasserting in the preface to the new edition that
the Agrarian System in the title should be understood to encompass not only land
revenue administration, but also agrarian economy and social structure, he is prompt in
emphasizing that the central feature of the agrarian system of Mughal India was that the
transfer from the peasant of his surplus producewas largely by way of exaction of land
revenue (p. 230).

Reading through the revised edition, one is almost led to believe that the Mughal
historiography today is no richer in terms of multiplicity of perspectives. It appears that
all the writings that did appear in the last four decades only helped him march gracefully
and unopposed to his grand set of conclusions. To be sure, he does take on Moreland at
many places and there are minor expostulations against Moosvi and Saran but no sense of
wading through a thickly contested historiographic terrain.

Yet, no student of medieval Indian history can probably afford to ignore this classic.
With passage of time and progress of historiography, it might have come to represent the
orthodox perspective, but it continues to be extremely useful, in relation to which
students of Mughal studies would continue to shape their own ideas for a long time to
come.

Pankaj K.Jha
St. Stephens College
University of Delhi