Consider the following statements about the Bengal countryside at the time of the Permanent Settlement: 1. The zamindars' troops were disbanded. 2. Within the villages, the power of jotedars was more effective than that of zamindars. 3. The East India Company made a rule that the property of women would not be taken over. 4. Adhiyars were sharecroppers on the land owned by bargadars. Which of the statements given above are correct?

Correct — B, 1, 2 and 3. Take the statements one at a time. The first is the standard account of what the Permanent Settlement of 1793 did to the zamindar's political power: the Company recognised him as the landholder but stripped the office of everything that made it a little kingdom, disbanding his troops, abolishing his customs duties and putting his court under the supervision of a Collector, so that the collectorate grew into a rival centre of authority in the district. The second is the rise of the jotedars, the rich peasants of North Bengal described in Francis Buchanan's survey of Dinajpur — men who had accumulated thousands of acres, controlled local trade and moneylending, and lived in the villages while the zamindar lived in town, so their word carried further where it mattered; they blocked the zamindar's attempts to raise the village jama, delayed his revenue and, when his estate came up for auction, often bought it. The third is the small legal detail that made the zamindars' favourite evasion possible: because the Company had ruled that the property of a woman would not be taken over, the Raja of Burdwan began his famous fictitious sale by transferring part of his zamindari to his mother, and only then set his agents to manipulate the auction. The fourth statement is the one that fails, and it fails on a switched word — adhiyar and bargadar are two names for the same people, the sharecroppers who brought their own ploughs and handed half the crop over after the harvest, and the land they worked belonged to the jotedars.

• (a)1, 2 and 4 — Keeps the sharecropper statement and drops the one about women's property. That is the wrong way round: adhiyars did not work land owned by bargadars — the two words name the same class of sharecropper — while the rule protecting a woman's property is precisely what let the Raja of Burdwan begin his fictitious sale by transferring land to his mother.
• (c)2, 3 and 4 — Throws out the disbanding of the zamindars' troops, which is one of the best-attested consequences of the settlement, and keeps the one statement that is actually false.
• (d)1 and 3 only — Drops the jotedars, and they are the heart of the chapter. The rise of a rich-peasant class whose power inside the village exceeded the zamindar's is the main social change the Permanent Settlement set off in North Bengal.

By the Permanent Settlement of 1793 the Company fixed the revenue demand on the zamindars of Bengal for ever, in the hope that a secure title would make them invest in the land. The demand was set high and was payable by a fixed date, and an estate whose dues fell short was auctioned. What followed was not the improving landlordism the Company imagined but a long crisis at the top and a quiet consolidation below it: zamindars defended themselves with fictitious sales, benami purchases and the lathyals who kept outside buyers off the land, while inside the villages the jotedars grew stronger.

Every one of these four statements is a sentence, or a compressed sentence, from a single NCERT chapter, so the item rewards having read the chapter rather than having memorised a date. The one designed to catch you is the fourth, and it works by swapping two words that appear in the same bracket of the original: sharecroppers are described there as 'adhiyars or bargadars', so the two terms are alternatives, and the landholders above them are the jotedars. Anyone who half-remembers three unfamiliar words in one sentence will accept the statement. The safeguard is to ask who is the landlord and who the tenant in the claim being made, and the chapter answers it plainly — the sharecropper brought his own plough, laboured in the field and handed half the produce to the jotedar after the harvest. On the printed wording, the apostrophe in 'zamindars' troops' is the paper's own and the statement is reproduced here exactly as it was set. Note finally that this paper has no official UPSC key, and the answer stored for it in our source data is 1, 2 and 4; the reading argued above rests on the chapter's own sentences and is set out in full in the provenance note for this card.

• Under the Permanent Settlement of 1793 the zamindars' troops were disbanded, their customs duties abolished and their courts placed under a Collector appointed by the Company.
• Francis Buchanan's survey of Dinajpur in North Bengal is the source for the jotedars — rich peasants holding sometimes several thousand acres, controlling local trade and moneylending.
• Sharecroppers were called adhiyars or bargadars; they brought their own ploughs and handed half the produce to the jotedar after the harvest.
• The Company had decreed that the property of women would not be taken over, which is why the Raja of Burdwan first transferred part of his zamindari to his mother.
• Between 1793 and 1801 four big zamindaris of Bengal, Burdwan among them, made benami purchases worth about Rs 30 lakh, and over 15 per cent of all auction sales were fictitious.

• Accepting the sharecropper statement because all three words are genuine terms from the chapter; adhiyar and bargadar name the same people.
• Assuming the Permanent Settlement destroyed the zamindars outright — their political powers were cut, but many kept control of their estates through fictitious sales.
• Treating the jotedars as a Company creation; they were rich peasants who grew stronger because the zamindar above them was in difficulty.

Either as a statements-and-code item drawn from this chapter, or as a term-matching question on jotedar, adhiyar, benami and lathyal, or as a comparison between the Permanent, ryotwari and mahalwari settlements.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Bengal countryside after the Permanent Settlement, the sharecroppers who brought their own ploughs and handed over half the produce after the harvest were known as

  • (a)Jotedars and mandals
  • (b)Adhiyars or bargadars
  • (c)Lathyals
  • (d)Amils

  Answer(b) Adhiyars or bargadars — two names for the same class of sharecropper, who worked land held by the jotedars of North Bengal.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The term benami, as used in accounts of the Bengal zamindars after 1793, refers to

  • (a)a survey of village land carried out by the Collector
  • (b)a transaction made in the name of a fictitious or insignificant person while the real beneficiary stays unnamed
  • (c)the annual revenue demand fixed on an estate
  • (d)the share of the crop paid by a sharecropper

  Answer(b) a transaction made in the name of a fictitious or insignificant person while the real beneficiary stays unnamed — the device by which zamindars bought back their own auctioned estates.