The term Indian feudalism is an attempt to classify Indian history according to a European model. Historians have become very reluctant to classify other societies into European models and today it is rare for Indian history to be described as feudal by academics; it still done in popular usage, however, but only for pejorative reasons to express disfavour, typically by critics. These include zamindar, jagir, desmukh, chowdhury. Most of these "systems" were abolished after the Independence of India and the rest of the Subcontinent, but most still exist, officially or in its remnants.
Ram Sharan Sharma
Prof. Ram Sharan Sharma has written extensively on the origin and growth of feudalism in India. His famous work Indian Feudalism (Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., 3rd Revised Edition, Delhi, 2005) deals with the issue. This book analyzes the practice of land grants, which became considerable in the Gupta period and widespread in the post-Gupta period. It shows how this led to the emergence of a class of landlords, endowed with fiscal and administrative rights superimposed upon a class of peasantry which was deprived of communal agrarian rights.
In his book, Early Medieval Indian Society: A Study in Feudalisation (Orient Longman Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Delhi, 2003), the early medieval period is the focus of Ram Sharan Sharma’s analysis. In this book Sharma highlights the feudalization of the socio-economic structure of India in early medieval times and attribute the rise of land grants to the varna conflict and the decline of trade. His panoramic sweep takes in the situation of the peasants and he underlines their loss of control over production due to the dominance of landlords. Sharma also examines the traditional varna system and reveals how it was adjusted to the landed hierarchy.
A discussion of the influence of tribals on Brahmanism and the proliferation of the sudra and other castes is included. Sharma argues that the presence of landed magnates altered ways of thinking in legal, social and religious matters.
Further reading
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