TAX
MAFI AND REWARD TO RAJAS AND KISANS
WHO CONVERTED IN ISLAM
LEGACY OF MUSLIM RULE IN INDIA BY K S
Lal Page 235 to 236
Collection
of Arrears We have earlier referred to the problem of collection of arrears.
When agriculture was almost entirely dependent on rainfall and land tax was
uniformally high, it was not possible
for the peasants to pay their revenue regularly and keep their accounts ever straight
with the government. The revenue used to fall into arrears. From the study
of contemporary sources it is almost certain that there were hardly any
remissions - even against conversion to Islam. MUSLIM RULERS WERE VERY KEEN ON PROSELYTIZATION. SULTAN FIROZ TUGHLAQ
RESCINDED JIZIYAH FOR THOSE WHO BECAME MUHAMMADAN.41 Sometimes he also
instructed his revenue collectors to accept conversions in lieu of Kharaj. 42 RAJAS AND ZAMINDARS WHO COULD NOT
DEPOSIT LAND REVENUE OR TRIBUTE IN TIME HAD TO CONVERT TO ISLAM.43 Bengal
and Gujarat provide specific instances which go to show that SUCH RULES PREVAILED THROUGHOUT THE
MUSLIM-RULED REGIONS.44 But remissions of Kharaj were not allowed. On the
other hand arrears went on accumulating and the kings tried to collect them
with the utmost rigour. In the Sultanate period there was a full-fledged
department by the name of the Diwan-iMustakharaj. The work of this department
was to inquire into the arrears lying in the names of collectors (Amils and
Karkuns) and force them to realize the balances in full.45 Such was the
strictness in the Sultanate period. Under the Mughals arrears were collected
with equal harshness. The system then existing shows that the peasants were
probably never relieved of the burden of arrears. In practice it could hardly
have been possible always to collect the entire amounts and the balance was
generally put forward to be collected along with the demand of the next year. A
bad year, therefore, might leave an intolerable burden for the peasants in the
shape of such arrears. These had a natural tendency to grow It also seems to
have been a common practice to demand the arrears, owed by peasants who had
fled or died, from their neighbour. And
peasants who could not pay revenue or arrears frequently became predial slaves.46
In short, between the thirteenth century when armies had to march to collect
the revenue,47 and the seventeenth century when peasants were running away from
the land because of the extortions of the state, no satisfactory principle of
assessment or collection except extortion could be discovered. The situation
became definitely worse in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as attested
to by contemporary historians Jean Law and Ghulam Hussain. It is this general
and continued stringency that was the legacy of the Mughal empire and the
Indian Muslim states which continued under the British Raj
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