Scrabble?! ZEMINDARI

Definitions of ZEMINDARI in various dictionaries:

A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an aristocrat. The term means land owner in Persian. Typically hereditary, zamindars held enormous tracts of land and control over their peasants, from whom they reserved the right to collect tax on behalf of imperial courts or for military purposes. Their families carried titular suffixes of lordship, such as Roy, Sri, Rai, Pillai, Panda Rao, Babu, Chaudhuri, Khan, Sardar, Malik, Thakur, Nayak, Thevar and Naidu. In the 19th and 20th centuries, with the advent of British imperialism, many wealthy and influential zamindars were bestowed with princely and royal titles such as Maharaja (Great King), Raja King) and Nawab. During the Mughal Empire, zamindars belonged to the nobility and formed the ruling class. Emperor Akbar granted them mansabs and their ancestral domains were treated as jagirs. In Bengal there were very few Mansabdars, one of them was Hazari Family of Dohazari, Chittagong which was originally a Rajput family. The name Hazari was a Mansabdari title,that means Commander of thousand soldiers or sowars (cavalry). The Hazari family of Dohazari, Chittagong is a cadet branch of the Gaur Rajput Royal family and during British era they were Zamindars of Chittagong. Under British colonial rule in India, the permanent settlement consolidated what became known as the zamindari system. The British rewarded supportive zamindars by recognizing them as princes. Many of the region's princely states were pre-colonial zamindar holdings elevated to a greater protocol. However, the British also reduced the land holdings of many pre-colonial aristocrats, demoting their status to a zamindar from previously higher ranks of nobility. The system was abolished during land reforms in East Bengal (Bangladesh) in 1950, India in 1951 and West 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, which, according to the Jesuits and Ralph Fitch, earned a reputation for successively repelling Mughal invasions through naval battles. The confederation was led by a zamindar-king, Isa Khan, and included both Muslims and Hindus, such as Pratapaditya. 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. The zamindars also promoted neoclassical and Indo-Saracenic architecture.