Indian Fudalism

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themselves’ in the local communal land and took advantage of the powerless peasants who were in no way helped by the continuous decentralization and ‘parcellization of sovereignty’ taking place all around them. Kosambi writes, that actual evidence of localized military presence, slave labour and accumulation of taxes in feudal hands can be first attributed to Firoz Tughlaq, in the 14th century, to whom he gives the credit(!) for the ‘real, full development of Indian feudalism’.

The grant system took a whole new avatar after the fall of the Guptas in the North and the Sathvahanas, with the evidences of internal social conflicts, de-urbanization, decline in interregional trade and many recorded instances of ‘paucity of gold coins’. This was the period of the so-called puranic Kali age, where the varnas started to collapse, with the vaisyas and sudras refusing to pay taxes. Sharma writes that this was more widespread in the peripheral regions, where indoctrination was unheard of, so the rulers resorted to ‘danda’ and ‘varnsrama dharma’ while using land grants and land revenues as an alternative fuel for the executive, which was given its own parcels of land as dominions, the state being relieved of responsibility thenceforth. This worked for a while, with the sudras being appeased by a rise in status, but then the conflicts between the landed class and the tenant class constant. In the end, Sharma says the temporal authorities, gave precedence to rajasasana(royal charter) over the rights of dharma(religious) and carita(customary). Peasant revolts were documented her and thither, but they were too small to cause harm, with texts revealing that brahmatya and disrespect of rajasasanas would be harshly treated. The peasants were kept quite by jaath, with the Brahmans, the guys with the most land, making full headway with these divisions to ever allow the peasants to see the big, bleak picture.

Vadra also talks about is the institution of the Samanta, translated to ‘tributary chief’, the closest word in meaning we have in the epigraphic records to the European vassal. Originally independent rajas, they became feudatories and entered into ‘tributary relationships’ with the emperor. Empire building became an activity of loyalties, land and lords and the forgetting of people. Yadava says the samanta system was the ‘bedrock of Indian feudalism’ as even though they were part of empires, there was no real consolidation of central power. The term he ascribes to this is ‘tributary superstructure’. Shrimali says the nexus between the Brahmans, state officials and traders was highly lucrative and widespread. Sharma mentions another important demarcation in the way lords were ‘obligated’ wherein, unlike European vassals who overtook administrative duties, Indian vassals had only military and social obligations, which later became construct of the jagirdari and mansabdari system of the Mughals, thereby effectively removing the “very essence of manorialism”.

Kosambi also tells us that the trade of ‘specialized crops’, metals and salt played a huge role in increasing the value of a feudal lord, in a business sense: a one-man guild, for the traders to buy from and protect their interests. He goes onto say that this nexus was built because of the need for the feudal lord to pay his overlord in cash but his agreement with the peasants demanded only a share of the produce, so this ‘exchange of commodities’ was inevitable, which grew bigger and interconnected to become what we know as capitalism . The grants themselves gave no ‘legal claim’ to the donor over the recipient. Sircar adds here, that grants to warriors were uncommon and even then was for services rendered and not for services expected. The Brahman donees were exempt from all obligations, the charters themselves said this was being done for ‘religious merit’, and they were never seen as the king’s vassals, such was their status, toppling the feudal ideal of landlord-dependant, making obsolete the idea of the Indian land grant system being a vassalage.

Vadra says that the ‘occupational transformations’ of the Brahmans and the Bhakti temple movement was, behind the facade, a rooted land-based feudal economy. Here, due to the nature of the grant, the monarch was not an overlord and the donee, not a vassal could, in addition to not being obligated to share his revenue with the monarch, make use of all the inhabitants and resources of the land too. RS Sharma points out that this conferment of ‘political and judicial rights’ established the ‘superior rights of the lord over the King’ and created estates where the peasant was ‘tied down to the soil’. He opines that serfdom (by the definition of “compulsive attachment to land”) is the right term to use when the fate of the peasants is transferable even if they didn’t work on their landlord’s lands and when the beneficiary attains powers where he can use forced labour to his whims and fancies. Mukhia’s biggest argument to this pivotal idea is that the immobility of the peasants was because they were in a state of “economic limitation” due to the emphatic punishments on untilled lands and the lack of a land and labour market to be absorbed into. Migration was simply useless.

It all started with Marx denigrating Asian history with his quotes ‘stagnant villages and ‘oriental despotism’ that the search began for dynamism and equality with ‘contemporary modern communities’. Rudra is of the opinion that we should treat feudalism as a unique European construct just as caste is an Indian one. Subramanyam says he is saddened over our failure “to develop sufficient Asiatic models”, that we have to try so hard to bend Indian interpretations to Western concepts. Some historians say the feudalism debate has overemphasized post-Gupta events, such as demonitaztion, urban decay and socio-economic roles of the Brahmins while failing to back up the ‘decentralized, segmentary states’ of the South. But until we draw a complete Indian picture to concretize Mukhia’s anti-feudalist stand, the universality of feudalism will win you the debate by a margin, though I think every Indian historian would love to see Habib’s Indian Medieval economy, the proverbial best of both worlds, becoming the accepted popular dictum and work towards it.