36-505: Bhawal Estate was a large zamindari in Bengal (in modern-day Gazipur , Bangladesh) until it was abolished according to East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950 . In the late 17th century, Daulat Ghazi was the zamindar of the Ghazi estate of Bhawal. Bala Ram was Diwan of Daulat Ghazi. In 1704, as the consequence of change in the policy of revenue collectionm, Bala Ram's son Sri Krishna
72-414: A considerable part of the economic resources of the empire but also military power. After the conquest of Hindustan, Babur informs us that one-sixth of its total revenues came from the territories of the chiefs. He writes: "The revenue of the countries now held by me (1528 A.D.) from Bhira to Bihar , is fifty-two crores as will be known in detail. Eight or nine crores of this are from the parganas of rais and
108-701: A jeweller named William Leedes and a painter, James Story, all financed by the Levant Company . This was the latest in a series of English attempts to penetrate the trade of the Indian Ocean and the Far East, going back to Anthony Jenkinson 's travels in Central Asia in the 1550s. From Aleppo, they reached the Euphrates , descended the river from Bir to Fallujah , crossed southern Mesopotamia to Baghdad , and dropped down
144-438: A lawfully wedded wife could inherit the zamindari if the ruling zamindar named her as an heir. In Odisha, the local kings of the princely states appointed or sometimes rewarded individuals as village heads or gountias . Such titles are closely related to the zamindar titles. Sometimes the king's own family members were created gountias such as Veer Surendra Sai whose ancestors were the kings of Sambalpur state and whose family
180-508: Is the Bhawal Rajbari palace. Bhawal Temple and Shoshan Ghaat (cremating area) are situated to the south of the palace. This Bangladesh -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Zamindari A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semi-autonomous feudal ruler of a zamindari (feudal estate). The term itself came into use during
216-664: The Mughal Empire , as well as the British rule , zamindars were the land-owning nobility of the Indian subcontinent and formed the ruling class. Emperor Akbar granted them mansabs and their ancestral domains were treated as jagirs . Majority of the big Zamindars were from the Hindu high-caste, usually Brahmin , Bhumihar , Kayastha and Rajput . During the colonial era, the Permanent Settlement consolidated what became known as
252-665: The Persian Gulf , Indian Ocean, South Asia , and Southeast Asia including the court of Mughal emperor Akbar the Great . At first he was no chronicler but he did eventually write descriptions of the Southeast Asia he saw in 1583–1591, and upon his return to England, in 1591, became a valuable consultant for the English East India Company . Fitch's place of birth has long been a mystery but recent research indicates that he
288-639: The Tai of Shan states and the Tai kingdom of Lanna (December 1586 and January 1587). Early in 1588 he visited Portuguese Malacca , another of Portugal's great fortresses and the gateway to the Far East, but found the security too strict to get passage into the China Sea. In the autumn of this year he began his homeward travels, first to Bengal ; then round the Indian coast, touching at Portuguese Cochin and Goa, to Ormuz; next up
324-646: The Tigris to Basra (May to July 1583). Here Eldred stayed behind to trade, while Fitch and the others sailed down the Persian Gulf to the Portuguese fortress and trading station at Ormuz , where they were promptly arrested as spies (at Venetian instigation, they claimed, as the Venetians resented the 16th-century Portuguese commercial monopoly in the Indian Ocean that called an end to centuries of Venetian, Genoese and Pisan – plus Catalan – dealings with Arab middlemen, down from
360-617: The zamindari system . The British rewarded supportive zamindars by recognising them as princes. Many of the region's princely states were pre-colonial zamindar holdings elevated to a greater protocol. The British also reduced the land holdings of many pre-colonial princely states and chieftaincies, demoting their status to a zamindar from previously higher ranks of royalty. The system was abolished during land reforms in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1950, India in 1951 and West Pakistan in 1959. The zamindars often played an important role in
396-477: The 24-Parganas and in 1765 got control of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Later in 1857 the British Crown was established as the sovereign. During Mughal Era the zamindars were not proprietors. They used to engage in wars and used to plunder neighbouring kings. So they never looked after the improvements in their land. The East India Company under Lord Cornwallis , realising this, made Permanent Settlement in 1793 with
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#1732852745476432-477: The Imperial Gazetteer of India, there were around 2000 ruling chiefs holding the royal title of Raja and Maharaja which included the rulers of princely states and several large chiefdoms. This numbers increases tenfold if zamindar/ jagirdar chiefs with other non royal but noble title are taken into count. Unlike the autonomous or frontier chiefs, the hereditary status of the zamindar class was circumscribed by
468-554: The Indian muslin . In 1586 Ralph Fitch remarked that in Sonargaon , just fifteen miles east of Dhaka , there is the best and finest cloth made of cotton that is in all India — Ralph Fitch He then pushed on by sea to Pegu and Burma . Here he visited the Rangoon area, ascended the Irrawaddy some distance, acquired a remarkable acquaintance with inland Pegu, and even reached to
504-464: The Leathersellers' Company, becoming a Liveryman in 1599, serving as Warden in 1607 and joining the company's Court of Assistants in 1608. His experience was greatly valued by the founders of the English East India Company , including another of Elizabeth's adventurers, Sir James Lancaster , who consulted him on Indian affairs. Fitch ranks among the most remarkable of Elizabethan adventurers. There
540-607: The Middle Ages) and sent as prisoners to the viceroy of Portuguese Goa and Damaon (September to October). Through the sureties procured by two Jesuits (one being Thomas Stevens , formerly of New College, Oxford , the first Englishman known to have reached India by the Cape route in 1579), Fitch and his friends regained their liberty. Story chose to join the Jesuits, and the others managed to escape from Goa (April 1584). They travelled through
576-572: The Mughals, and the heir depended to a certain extent on the pleasure of the sovereign. Heirs were set by descent or a times even adoption by religious laws. Under the British Empire, the zamindars were to be subordinate to the Crown and not act as hereditary lords, but at times family politics was at the heart of naming an heir. At times, a cousin could be named an heir with closer family relatives present;
612-770: The Persian Gulf to Basra and up the Tigris to Mosul ( Nineveh ); finally via Tirfa, Bir on the Euphrates. He was appointed the Levant Company's Consul in Aleppo and Tripoli, to the Mediterranean. He arrived back in London on 29 April 1591, eight years after he had left. Since no news of him had reached his family and friends in that time, he had been presumed dead after seven years and his will had been proved. He resumed his involvement with
648-460: The development of Bengal. They played pivotal part during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 . The British continued the tradition of bestowing both royal and noble titles to zamindars who were loyal to the paramount. The title of Raja, Maharaja, Rai Saheb, Rai Bahadur, Rao, Nawab, Khan Bahadur were bestowed to princely state rulers and to many zamindars from time to time. According to an estimate in
684-419: The discipline of global health to a feudal structure where individuals and institutions in high-income nations act as zamindars over health issues of low-and-middle income nations, thus sustaining the imperial nature of global health. Ralph Fitch Ralph Fitch (1550 – 1611) was a gentleman , a merchant of London and one of the earliest British travellers and merchants to visit Mesopotamia ,
720-598: The extant zamindari system of revenue collection in the north of the country. They recognised the zamindars as landowners and proprietors as opposed to Mughal government and in return required them to collect taxes. Although some zamindars were present in the south, they were not so in large numbers and the British administrators used the ryotwari (cultivator) method of collection, which involved selecting certain farmers as being land owners and requiring them to remit their taxes directly. The Zamindars of Bengal were influential in
756-484: The heart of India to the court of the Great Mogul Akbar , then probably at Agra . The jeweller Leedes obtained a remunerative post with Akbar while Fitch continued his journey of exploration. Fitch did the first leg of that journey, from Agra to Allahabad , by joining a convoy "of one hundred and fourscore boates laden with Salt, Opium, Hinge ( asafoetida ), Lead, Carpets and diverse other commodities" going "downe
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#1732852745476792-544: The importance of zamindars in medieval India. He defines zamindars as "vassal chiefs". He points out that there were areas under direct control of Mughals where there were no zamindars and then there were territories of the vassal chiefs who had autonomy over their state, but were subjugated by the Mughals and paid a tribute/ nazarana to the Mughal Emperor. However, Irfan Habib in his book Agrarian system of Mughal India, divided
828-466: The north of India because Mughal influence in the south was less apparent. Historian S. Nurul Hasan divided the zamindars into three categories: (i) The Autonomous Rai/ Rajas or Chiefs, (ii) the intermediary zamindars and (iii) the primary zamindars. The East India Company established themselves in India by first becoming zamindars of three villages of Calcutta, Sultani and Govindpur. Later they acquired
864-491: The rajas who have submitted in the past (to the Sultans of Delhi ), receive allowance and maintenance." According to Arif Qandhari, one of the contemporary historians of Akbar 's reign, there were around two to three hundred rajas or rais and zamindars who ruled their territory from strong forts under the emperor's suzerainty. Each of these rajas and zamindars commanded an army of their own generally consisting of their clansmen and
900-568: The regional histories of the subcontinent. One of the most notable examples is the 16th-century confederation formed by twelve zamindars in the Bhati region ( Baro-Bhuyans ), which, according to the Jesuits and Ralph Fitch , earned a reputation for successively repelling Mughal invasions through naval battles. The zamindars were also patrons of the arts. The Tagore family produced India's first Nobel laureate in literature in 1913, Rabindranath Tagore , who
936-557: The reign of Mughals , and later the British began using it as a native synonym for "estate". The term means landowner in Persian . They were typically hereditary and held the right to collect tax on behalf of imperial courts or for military purposes. During the period of British colonial rule in India many wealthy and influential zamindars were bestowed with princely and royal titles such as Maharaja , Raja / Rai , Babu , Malik , Chaudhary , Nawab , Khan and Sardar . During
972-677: The river jumna (Yamuna)". He reached Allahabad sometime in November 1585, when work on Akbar's great Fort at Allahabad was nearing completion. In September 1585, Newberry decided to begin his return journey overland via Lahore . He disappeared, presumably being robbed and murdered, in the Punjab. Fitch went on, descending the Jumna and the Ganges , to visit Allahabad , Benares , Patna , Kuch Behar , Hughli, Chittagong , etc. (1585–1586). His appreciating words about
1008-474: The total numbers of their troops as Abul Fazl tells us, stood at forty-four lakhs comprising 384,558 cavalry, 4,277,057 infantry; 1863 elephants, 4260 guns and 4500 boats. During the Mughal Era, there was no clear difference between the princely states and zamindari estates. Even the ruling autonomous chiefs of princely states were called zamindars. Moreland was one of the first historians to draw our attention to
1044-489: The zamindari. Rajendra was married to Rani Bilasmani Devi. They had 3 daughters - Indumayi, Jyotirmayi and Tarinmayi, and 3 sons - Ranendra Narayan, Ramendra Narayan and Rabindra Narayan. Writer Kaliprosanna Ghosh was appointed the Dewan of Bhawal Estate for Rajendra Narayan. Rajendra died in 1901. The estate comprised over 1,500 square kilometer, which included 2,274 villages and around 55,000 villagers. Its biggest establishment
1080-405: The zamindars and made them proprietors of their land in return for a fixed annual rent and left them independent for the internal affairs of their estates. This Permanent Settlement created the new zamindari system as we know it today. After 1857 the army of the majority of zamindars were abolished with exception of a small number of force for policing/digwari/kotwali in their respective estates. If
1116-461: The zamindars into two categories: the autonomous chiefs who enjoyed "sovereign power" in their territories and the ordinary zamindars who exercised superior rights in land and collected land revenue and were mostly appointed by the Mughals. These people were known as the zamindars (intermediaries) and they collected revenue primarily from the Ryots ( peasants ). The zamindari system was more prevalent in
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1152-496: The zamindars were not able to pay the rent until sunset, parts of their estates were acquired and auctioned. This created a new class of zamindars in the society. As the rest of India came later under the control of the East India Company (EIC), different ways were implemented in different provinces to in regards to the ruling authorities in the region to get them to accede to Company authority. The British generally adopted
1188-403: Was installed as the zamindar of Bhawal by Murshid Quli Khan . Since then, through acquisitions the zamindari expanded. The family turned into the proprietor of the whole Bhawal pargana after purchasing the zamindari of J. Wise, an indigo grower for Rs 4,46,000. In 1878, British Raj conferred Raja title to Zamindar Kalinarayan Roy Chowdhury. His son Raja Rajendra Narayan Roy Chowdhury extended
1224-623: Was most likely born in All Saints' parish, Derby. The first known documentary reference to him is in the archives of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers , of which he was a Freeman and from which Company he received a loan of £50 for two years, 1575–1577. In February 1583, he embarked in the Tyger for Tripoli (the seaport of Aleppo ) in Syria, together with merchants John Newberry and John Eldred,
1260-462: Was often based at his estate. The zamindars also promoted neoclassical and Indo-Saracenic architecture. When Babur conquered North India, there were many autonomous and semiautonomous rulers who were known locally as Rai, Raja, Rana, Rao, Rawat, etc. while in the various Persian chronicles, they were referred to as zamindars and marzabans . They were vassals who ruled, mostly hereditarily, over their respective territories. They commanded not only
1296-711: Was the gountia of Khinda village. The zamindari system was mostly abolished in independent India soon after its creation with the First Amendment of the Constitution of India which amended the right to property as shown in Articles 19 and 31. In East Pakistan, the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950 had a similar effect of ending the system. Due to the zamindari system, small farmers could not become financially strong. Critics have likened
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