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( Pargana)
A pargana is a former administrative unit of the Indian subcontinent, used primarily, but not exclusively, by the Muslim kingdoms. The Mughal emperor Akbar organized the empire into sarkars, roughly the equivalent of districts, and sarkars were organized into subahs, or provinces. In the Mughal system, parganas served as the local administrative units of a sarkar. The chief administrator of a pargana was a parganait or parganadar; other pargana officials were the shiqdar (magistrate), amil (assessor and collector of revenue), bitikchi (chief accountant and registrar), qanungo (keeper of revenue records), and the fotahdar or khazinadhar (treasurer). Individual parganas observed common customs regarding land rights and responsibilities, which were known as the pargana dastur, and each pargana had its own customs regarding rent, fees, wages, and weights and measures, known as the pargana nirikh. As the British expanded into former Mughal provinces, starting with Bengal, they at first retained the pargana administration, but, under the Governorship of Charles Cornwallis, enacted the Permanent Settlement of 1793, which abolished the pargana system in favor of the zamindari system, in which zamindars were made the absolute owners of rural lands, and abolished the pargana dastur and pargana nirikh. British administration consisted of districts, which were divided into tehsils or taluks. Parganas remained important as a geographical term, persisting in land surveys, village identification, court decrees, etc. The pargana system persisted in several princely states, including Tonk and Gwalior. Parganas disappeared almost completely after the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, although the term lives on in place names, like the districts of North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas in India's West Bengal state.
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