Zamindar

During 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. Most of the big zamindars belonged to the Hindu high-caste, usually Brahmin, Rajput, Bhumihar, or Kayastha. During the colonial era, the Permanent Settlement consolidated what became known as 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 noble zamindars from previously higher ranks of royalty. During the period of British colonial rule in India, many wealthy and influential zamindars were bestowed with noble and royal titles such as Maharaja, Raja/Rai, Babu, Rai Sahib, Rai Bahadur, Nawab, and Khan.

The system was abolished during land reforms in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) in 1950, India in 1951, and West Pakistan (present-day Pakistan) in 1959. The zamindars often played an important role in 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 was often based at his estate. Similarly, many zamindars also promoted neoclassical and Indo-Saracenic architecture.

Mughal era

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 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 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 the total numbers of their troops, as Abul Fazl tells us, stood at forty-four lakhs, comprising 384,558 cavalry, 4,277,057 infantry, 1,863 elephants, 4,260 guns, and 4,500 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 the importance of zamindars in medieval India. He defines zamindars as "vassal chiefs". He points out that there were areas under direct control of the 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 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 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.