Indian Feudalism: Evolution, History and Debate

The concept of “feudalism” historically originated in medieval Europe and has long been a point of reference in global historiography. Derived from the German word feud, meaning a piece of land, feudalism traditionally described the socio-economic and political arrangements that developed predominantly in medieval France, England, and Southern Italy. Its core rested on agricultural production tied to a hierarchical structure: lords provided land and military protection, while peasants (or serfs) offered labor and dues in return, often under judicial control of their lords.

Feudalism, thus, encompassed not just economic but social and political relations. Its origins trace back to the late Roman Empire and Charlemagne’s reign (742–814 CE), though it truly matured in the 11th century. Even in Europe, the term ‘feudalism’ is relatively modern, entering academic use only by the 17th century—well after the actual system had declined. The idea was later extended globally during the phase of European expansion, leading to adaptations in its interpretation across different regions, including India.

Initially, European feudalism was primarily viewed through the lens of lord-vassal customary law, characterized by rigidity and decentralization of power. Over time, especially with the influence of Marxist historiography, attention shifted to the lord-peasant relationship. This shift brought to light issues of production, technology, monetary economy, and social structures. The Annales School further expanded the field, exploring dimensions like family structure, gender roles, and collective mentalities.

Feudalism in the Indian Context: Early Interpretations

Indian feudalism refers to a socio-economic and political structure in Indian history, particularly between the Gupta period (c. 4th century CE) and the early medieval period (up to c. 13th century CE), where land grants became a dominant feature of administration, and hierarchical relationships developed between lords and peasants. This system led to the decentralization of political power, decline of trade, ruralization of the economy, and the rise of intermediary classes such as landlords and vassals.

Salient Features of Indian Feudalism (as per R.S. Sharma)

Hierarchy of Landed Intermediaries

• Land was granted by the state to vassals, officers, and others who had military and administrative duties. These individuals were known as Samantas.
• These landholders often divided their land further among subordinates to get it cultivated, creating a multi-layered hierarchy of:
  • Landed aristocrats
  • Tenants
  • Sharecroppers (Ardhikas)
  • Cultivators (peasants)
• This system reflected a lord-vassal relationship and led to unequal distribution of land and its produce.

Forced Labour and Semi-Serfdom

• Grantees like Brahmanas and village officials had the right to extract forced labour from peasants.
• Originally, only the king could demand forced labour, but this power was passed down to local lords and officials.
• This led to a form of semi-serfdom, where agricultural workers had limited freedom and were tied to the land.

Loss of Peasant Rights

• Peasants lost their traditional rights over land as rulers and intermediaries claimed more authority.
• Many peasants were reduced to mere tenants and were constantly at risk of being evicted.
• Sharecropping became common, and peasants faced heavy taxation, debt, and coercion.

Surplus Extraction

• The surplus produce of peasants was taken through various means.
• Apart from taxation, extra-economic coercion (force or pressure beyond normal economic practices) was often used.
• New methods evolved to economically dominate the peasantry.

Closed Village Economy

• Villages became self-sufficient and isolated.
• Land grants often included not just land but also the people living on it—peasants, artisans, and craftsmen—who were all tied to the village.
• This created mutual dependence but also allowed grantees to control the population more easily.

Limited Trade and Mobility

• Sharma emphasized that long-distance trade had declined, which contributed to the rise of feudalism.
• Peasants became dependent on local landlords and were restricted in their mobility.
• This isolation further deepened the feudal structure.

Two Main Phases:

• Early Indian Feudalism (Gupta to 7th century CE): Rise of religious land grants and emergence of local autonomy.
• Later Indian Feudalism (8th to 13th century CE): Growth of secular land grants, military obligations, and vassal relationships.

Historiographical Debate:

• R.S. Sharma argued Indian feudalism was real and similar in some ways to European feudalism, emphasizing economic stagnation, forced labor, and decline of trade.
• Harbans Mukhia and others challenged this, arguing that Indian feudalism lacked serfdom, had different social dynamics, and saw continuity of trade and urbanization in many regions.

In India, the term ‘feudalism’ first gained currency through British colonial interpretations. Colonel James Tod, a British officer and historian of Rajasthan, identified similarities between the medieval European feudal system and the social structure of Rajasthan in the early 19th century. According to Tod, just like in Europe, Indian vassals offered loyalty and military service to their lords, who, in turn, ensured security and subsistence.

For decades, references to feudalism in Indian historical writing remained vague and derivative. However, a major transformation began in the mid-20th century, especially with the rise of Marxist historiography. Discontented with Karl Marx’s original classification of India under the “Asiatic Mode of Production” (AMP), Indian Marxist historians sought alternative frameworks.

Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Production vs. Indian Feudalism

Marx described AMP as a historical stagnation wherein all property was either communal or state-owned, precluding class struggle and historical change. This depiction painted Asia as a “changeless” Orient, a view shared by Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, James Mill, and Hegel. Marxist historians in India, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, rejected this orientalist perception. They aimed to establish that Indian history, too, underwent dynamic changes, shaped by class structures and socio-economic transformations. To this end, some replaced the AMP framework with that of “Indian feudalism.”

Though Irfan Habib—one of the most prominent Indian Marxist historians—distanced himself from the term “Indian feudalism,” he nevertheless criticized the Asiatic Mode as insufficient. In contrast, historians like D.D. Kosambi and R.S. Sharma advanced the feudalism thesis significantly.

D.D. Kosambi’s Contribution

D.D. Kosambi offered a theoretical model of Indian feudalism in his 1956 landmark work, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History. He viewed the emergence of feudalism in India as a dual process—from above and from below. From above, it was shaped by state policies granting land and administrative rights to Brahmins and officials. From below, individuals and small rural elites rose to positions of power, becoming landlords or vassals over time.

Kosambi, however, did not back his model with extensive empirical data. This task was undertaken by R.S. Sharma, who provided a more detailed and structured explanation of Indian feudalism in his seminal book Indian Feudalism (1965).

R.S. Sharma’s Feudalism Thesis

R.S. Sharma rejected the dual-process model proposed by Kosambi. He emphasized that Indian feudalism primarily emerged from above—as a direct outcome of state action. Sharma adapted the influential European feudal model developed by Belgian historian Henri Pirenne in the 1920s–30s.

Pirenne argued that in Europe, long-distance trade had allowed urban civilization to flourish until it was disrupted by Arab invasions in the 7th century. This disruption led to the collapse of cities, decline of coinage, and emergence of a “closed estate economy” dominated by lords and reliant on local production. Pirenne saw feudalism and trade as antithetical.

Sharma applied this framework to post-Gupta India. He argued that following the Gupta Empire’s fall, long-distance trade declined, leading to ruralization of the economy. Cities shrank, urban life stagnated, and monetary circulation collapsed. In response, the state increasingly compensated its officials and Brahmin grantees not with coins but with land and fiscal rights. These landholders gained control over the peasants and the produce, thereby becoming intermediaries between the state and the cultivators.

Sharma emphasized that this transfer of both land and associated rights over people marked the birth of Indian feudalism. Over time, these intermediaries formed a powerful landed elite akin to the European aristocracy. The peasants, now under increasing subjection, resembled European serfs. This transformation was so extensive that Sharma identified it as a defining characteristic of early medieval India.

He also connected the rise of feudalism to the emergence of a new class of scribes, eventually institutionalized as the Kayastha caste, who were necessary to record land grants and other state documents. This land-grant economy continued until around the 11th century, when trade and urbanization revived, signaling a potential decline in the feudal structure.

Additional Support and Modifications

While Sharma did not identify a specific equivalent of the Arab invasion in Indian history, B.N.S. Yadava suggested that the Hun invasions during the 5th and 6th centuries played a similar role in disrupting trade and initiating ruralization. Yadava, along with D.N. Jha, supported Sharma’s thesis and contributed further detail, especially regarding the socio-political aspects of land grants and the administrative decentralization that ensued.

However, Sharma found limited evidence of peasant revolts akin to those in Europe. The only significant instance he cited was the 11th-century Kaivarta rebellion in eastern Bengal, led by a community traditionally involved in boatmanship and part-time agriculture.

The influence of the Indian feudalism model was widespread. South Indian historians such as M.G.S. Narayanan and Noboru Karashima accepted it, adapting the framework to the Tamil region’s context. The model became dominant in Indian historical writing for several decades.

Criticism and Counterpoints

Despite its wide acceptance, Sharma’s feudalism thesis was not without critics. The most notable among them was D.C. Sircar, who, although a respected historian, stood ideologically outside the Marxist school. Yet both sides of the debate did not significantly question the foundational assumptions of feudalism itself until the late 1970s.

A more nuanced rethinking began within the Marxist fold, inspired in part by global shifts in historiography. A key moment came with Maurice Dobb’s Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946), where Dobb critiqued Pirenne’s opposition between trade and feudalism. Drawing from Engels, Dobb argued that rather than trade ending feudalism, in Eastern Europe, the revival of trade had led to what he termed a “second serfdom.” Increased trade sometimes intensified exploitation, prompting peasants to flee to urban centers—thus weakening feudal control.

This thesis sparked an international Marxist debate in the early 1950s over whether trade and feudalism were necessarily incompatible. These debates questioned the assumption that trade automatically leads to the dissolution of feudal systems, suggesting instead that feudalism could adapt and even thrive under certain trade conditions.

Meanwhile, French historiography—particularly the Annales School—broadened the methodological scope of historical inquiry. Their multi-disciplinary approach examined not just economic structures but also the lived experiences of ordinary people, their beliefs, gender relations, and cultural practices. These developments influenced Indian historical research in later decades, encouraging scholars to revisit and diversify the understanding of feudalism beyond Sharma’s economic determinism.

The Debate on Feudalism in Indian History

In 1979, historian Harbans Mukhia stirred the Indian historical community with his provocative Presidential Address to the Medieval India Section of the Indian History Congress, titled “Was There Feudalism in Indian History?” As a committed Marxist historian, Mukhia challenged both the theoretical framework and empirical foundations of the Indian feudalism thesis by juxtaposing it with European medieval developments.

Theoretical Foundations: Is Feudalism a Universal System?

Mukhia’s theoretical challenge focused on the applicability of “feudalism” as a universal category. While capitalism, driven by profit maximization, has evolved into a global system with ever-expanding production and markets, pre-capitalist formations like feudalism were primarily consumption-driven and localized. Feudalism, thus, could not attain the systemic expansion or universality of capitalism.

If feudalism were to be seen in diverse regional variants — European, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian — it either dilutes the term to mean any pre-capitalist system (and thus loses specificity), or if narrowly defined, the variations become so wide that the term loses practical utility. Even within medieval Europe, scholars like Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff had grown skeptical of using the term at all due to its overgeneralization and ambiguity.

Empirical Reassessment: Comparing India and Western Europe

Mukhia’s most substantial intervention was empirical, comparing medieval Europe with India across three parameters: ecology, technology, and social organization of agricultural labor.

Western Europe:

• Received only four months of sunshine annually, necessitating intense and seasonal agricultural activity.
• Agricultural technology was primitive and extremely labor-intensive, with a low land-labor productivity ratio (1:2.5).
• The tight production window necessitated the tying of labor to land — the rise of serfdom.
• This serf-lord relationship bred conflict. Serfs sought autonomy, while lords tried to intensify control.
• Technological innovations by the 12th century raised productivity to 1:4, sparking agricultural expansion, population growth, and urbanization.
• The Black Death (1348–51) disrupted this process by causing massive depopulation, leading to attempts at restoring serfdom, which were fiercely resisted by prosperous peasants in 14th-century revolts.
• By the late 14th century, classical feudalism had begun to collapse.

Medieval India:

• Enjoyed nearly ten months of sunshine annually, allowing staggered agricultural activity.
• Soil fertility was concentrated in the top layer due to monsoon patterns, negating the need for deep tilling.
• Indian bulls’ humped backs allowed efficient use of ploughs, unlike European bulls with flat backs.
• Land productivity was significantly higher — a yield ratio of 1:16, and double cropping was common, unlike in Europe where this was not practiced until the 19th century.
• Tied labor (begar) was not central to production but was employed for non-productive services (e.g., carrying zamindars’ goods or supplying milk/oil).
• Peasant-zamindar tensions were located outside production — primarily over revenue demands.
• Hence, India did not witness technological breakthroughs or productivity-led transformations seen in Europe.
• Peasants retained control over their labor and means of production, contrasting sharply with the European serf system.

Mukhia concluded that India’s agrarian structure was marked by a “peasant economy” rather than feudalism in the European sense. The Indian peasant, unlike the European serf, had greater autonomy over labor and land, though revenue obligations to the state or zamindars remained heavy.

From India to a Global Discussion: The Feudalism Debate

Mukhia’s essay, republished in the Journal of Peasant Studies in 1981, catalyzed global interest. In 1985, it led to a special double issue titled Feudalism and Non-European Societies, edited by T. J. Byres and Mukhia, with eight scholarly responses. This collection expanded the debate to include China, Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, highlighting that the question of feudalism was not confined to Europe or India.

Despite wide engagement, the discussion did not end there. Additional papers continued to appear until 1993. The sustained exchange of ideas came to be known as the “Feudalism Debate.” A compilation titled The Feudalism Debate was published in New Delhi in 1999, documenting this rich historiographical engagement.

Indian Feudalism Revisited: R. S. Sharma and Others

R. S. Sharma, the primary proponent of the Indian feudalism thesis, responded thoughtfully to these critiques. In his essay “How Feudal was Indian Feudalism?”, Sharma refined several earlier claims:

• Initially, he had attributed the rise of feudalism to state-driven land grants to intermediaries.
• Later, he expanded his thesis to consider broader economic and social crises as causes — symbolized in the notion of Kaliyuga, which represented decline and transition in early medieval literature.

B.N.S. Yadava contributed to this rethinking by analyzing the idea of Kaliyuga as indicative of a structural crisis. This enriched the Indian feudalism model by embedding it in collective socio-cultural consciousness, rather than viewing it as purely administratively driven.

Sharma also documented new instances of peasant resistance beyond the ones in his 1965 work, reinforcing the idea of class conflict and struggle over surplus. Furthermore, in Early Medieval Indian Society: A Study in Feudalisation (2001), he ventured into ideological and cultural realms — examining the “feudal mind” and exploring how hierarchical ideas shaped architecture, art, gratitude, and loyalty as instruments of feudal ideology.

Other historians aligned with the feudalism thesis followed suit. D.N. Jha’s edited volume The Feudal Order: State, Society and Ideology in Early Medieval India (1987, 2000) explored the religious and cultural facets of feudal society. The Bhakti movement, for example, was interpreted as reinforcing feudal values of surrender, loyalty, and subordination — characteristics easily transferable from deity to feudal lord.

However, internal differences existed within the Indian feudalism school:

• D.N. Jha questioned the spatial mismatch between the crisis (Kaliyuga) narrative, which originated in peninsular India, and the feudal transition, which Sharma placed in Brahmanical North India.
• B.P. Sahu critiqued the use of Kaliyuga as evidence of social crisis, interpreting it instead as a rearticulation of kingship and Brahmanical authority.

Feudalism, Trade, and Urbanisation

A key assumption in the Indian feudalism thesis was the antagonism between trade/urbanisation and feudalism. This view has come under intense scrutiny due to shifts in both Indian and European historiography.

In early 20th-century Europe, Henri Pirenne posited a rigid dichotomy between rural feudalism and urban trade-based economies. However, this was later overturned:

• Marc Bloch termed the distinction between “natural” and “money” economy a “pseudo-dilemma.”
• Guy Bois argued that feudal relations evolved precisely in regions experiencing growing trade.

Consequently, the trade-feudalism dichotomy was discarded in its birthplace — Europe. Empirical evidence also demonstrated that even in subsistence economies, trade remained crucial (e.g., for salt, clothing, or regional food exchanges). Thus, self-sufficiency was more myth than reality.

Indian historiography has followed suit. D.N. Jha critiqued Sharma’s overreliance on the absence of long-distance trade to explain feudalism. Other historians like B.D. Chattopadhyay demonstrated that trade revived in India well before 1000 CE — the date suggested by feudalists — mirroring similar developments in Europe. Ranabir Chakravarti, in Trade in Early India (2001) and Trade and Traders in Early Indian Society (2002), provided robust evidence of vibrant trade networks in the early medieval period.

The “monetary anaemia” thesis — the claim that India’s feudalism arose from a scarcity of coinage — has also been challenged:

• B.D. Chattopadhyay and B.N. Mukherjee presented numismatic evidence to the contrary.
• John S. Deyell’s Living Without Silver (1990) argued that India functioned with diverse media of exchange, including non-metallic forms.
• Marc Bloch had earlier shown that in medieval Europe, objects like spices, cloth, or grain could serve as money. Similarly, cowries in India — sourced via long-distance trade with the Maldives — functioned as a widespread currency.

Methodological Challenges in the Indian Feudalism Thesis

Apart from theoretical and empirical issues, there are significant methodological challenges associated with the Indian feudalism framework. One major problem concerns periodisation. If Indian feudalism is said to span from roughly c. 300 to c. 1100 CE, then how should we characterize the subsequent period — the so-called medieval era of Indian history, which stretches until the onset of colonial rule?

Is it methodologically sound to place this long post-1100 stretch under a single analytical category, implicitly treating it as a monolithic phase devoid of major internal transformations? Such an approach would risk oversimplification and undermine the historian’s task of identifying structural mutations and temporal shifts.

In contrast, European historiography has long recognized significant internal changes within feudalism. For instance, Marc Bloch famously divided the feudal period into the First Feudal Age and the Second Feudal Age, with the transition occurring around the year 1000. According to Bloch, these two phases were so distinct that a person from one would feel like a stranger in the other. This notion of substantial transformation within the feudal structure has since become conventional wisdom in European studies, even though terminology may vary — with some scholars preferring terms like “Low and High Middle Ages” instead.

Moreover, there is broad consensus in European historiography that feudalism was succeeded by the emergence of capitalism, of which colonialism was a crucial expression. This process of transition and the identification of successor systems forms an integral part of understanding historical development.

This raises further questions for the Indian context. If Indian feudalism lasted approximately eight centuries, what were the internal changes that occurred within it? What socio-economic system, if any, succeeded Indian feudalism after c. 1100 CE? Certainly, capitalism was not the next phase in India’s economic evolution. Yet, proponents of the Indian feudalism thesis have not systematically addressed these questions of change, continuity, and succession.

Notably, D.D. Kosambi, one of the pioneering Marxist historians, extended the period of Indian feudalism up to the 17th century, effectively enlarging its scope to almost 1400 years. This sweeping temporal extension, while intellectually bold, creates serious difficulties for contemporary historians. Such a move tends to flatten historical complexity, treating more than a millennium as a single, undifferentiated epoch — a notion that clashes with the modern historian’s focus on identifying even minor shifts over shorter durations.

Despite these methodological concerns, The Feudalism Debate has undoubtedly enriched Indian historiography. The intellectual rigour and maturity displayed throughout the debate have been exceptional. As Susan Reynolds, a leading English medievalist, noted in a review, the Indian debate maintained a high academic standard and never descended into personal hostility — a rare and commendable feature in academic discourse, especially in contrast with some circles in the West.

The fertility of the debate lies in the fact that it compelled historians to re-examine, refine, and even revise their positions, while still defending their central arguments. No definitive resolution was reached — but such an outcome is characteristic of historical inquiry itself. As a discipline, history thrives on continuous self-questioning and critical reassessment, rather than on final answers.

Conclusion

The development of Indian feudalism has been interpreted in various ways by different scholars, reflecting a wide spectrum of historiographical perspectives.

D.D. Kosambi, a pioneering Marxist historian, conceptualised the growth of Indian feudalism as a twofold process — one that evolved from above as well as from below. According to this view, feudal structures were shaped both by state actions and by grassroots socio-economic changes such as peasant subordination and localised agrarian hierarchies.

In contrast, R.S. Sharma offered a more top-down explanation, asserting that Indian feudalism was primarily the product of state action. Sharma’s influential thesis highlighted the land grant system, administrative decentralisation, and the weakening of state control as central to the emergence of a feudal economy. His interpretation was further reinforced and elaborated upon by scholars such as B.N.S. Yadava and D.N. Jha, who provided additional historical evidence and analysis to support the argument.

However, in 1979, a significant challenge to this framework was posed by Harbans Mukhia, who famously asked, “Was there feudalism in Indian history?” Mukhia questioned whether the term “feudalism,” derived from European historical experience, could be appropriately applied to the Indian context. His critique focused on the lack of certain fundamental features of European feudalism — such as legally recognised vassalage and hereditary rights — in Indian society.

In response, R.S. Sharma penned an important rejoinder titled “How Feudal was Indian Feudalism?”, in which he sought to reassert the validity of the feudalism framework in Indian history. However, Sharma’s position evolved into a more nuanced interpretation, attempting to adapt the concept of feudalism to Indian conditions rather than apply it rigidly in European terms.

A new dimension to this ongoing debate emerged with the examination of Bhakti movements, which some scholars have suggested reflect feudal characteristics. In this line of thought, Bhakti — particularly its devotional ideology — is seen as embodying the lord-vassal relationship, where the devotee is akin to a vassal and the deity assumes the role of an overlord. This metaphorical transposition reinforces the cultural and ideological aspects of feudalism in Indian society.

More recently, however, the key indicators of Indian feudalism — particularly the claims of declining trade and urbanisation during the early medieval period — have come under serious scrutiny. Eminent historians such as B.D. Chattopadhyaya, Ranabir Chakravarti, and John S. Deyell have questioned the narrative of economic regression, offering counter-evidence that points to the persistence of commercial activity and urban continuity in various parts of the subcontinent. Their work suggests that rather than a sharp decline, Indian trade and urban centres underwent transformation and regional diversification during the so-called feudal period.

For Reading more Such Blog post: https://historywithahmad.com/

SUGGESTED READINGS

Chakravaxti, Ranabir (2002), nade and Traders in Early Indian Society, New Delhi.
Deyell, John (1 WO), Living Without Silver: The Monetary History of Early Medieval
North India, New Delhi.
Jha D. N., (ed.) (2000), The Feudal Order: State, Society and Ideology in Early
Medeval India, New Delhi.
Kosambi, D. D., (h56), ~n Intmduction to the Srudy ofIndian History, Bombay.
Kulke, Hermann, (ed.) (1 W4), The State in India, A. D. 1000-1 700, New Delhi.
Mukhia, Harbam, (ed.) (1 999), The Feudalism Debate, New Delhi.
Sharma, R. S., (1965 and 1980), Indian Feudalism, New Delhi.
Sharma, R. S., (2001), Early Medieval Indian Society: A Study in Feudalisation,
Orient Longman, Calcutta.

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