Pargana or parganah , also spelt pergunnah during the time of the Delhi Sultanate , Mughal Empire times and British Raj , is a former administrative unit of the Indian subcontinent . Each parganas may or may not be subdivided into pirs . Those revenue units are used primarily, but not exclusively, by Muslim kingdoms. After Indian independence the parganas became equivalent to Block / Tahsil and pirs became Grampanchayat .
6-532: Chauri Chaura ( Pargana : Haveli, Tehsil : Gorakhpur) is a town near Gorakhpur , Uttar Pradesh , India . The town is located at a distance of 16 km from Gorakhpur , on the State Highway between Gorakhpur and Deoria . The town railway station is located 25 km south-east of Gorakhpur Junction . In 1922, the Chauri Chaura incident took place in the town when protesters set fire to
12-581: A police station and killed at least 22 policemen in retaliation for the police firing on several protesters who had taken part in the non-cooperation movement as part of the Indian freedom struggle . This incident is depicted in the movie Gandhi . Pargana Parganas were introduced by the Delhi Sultanate . As a revenue unit, a pargana consists of several mouzas , which are the smallest revenue units, consisting of one or more villages and
18-737: 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 favour 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
24-540: The pargana nirikh . Pargana consisted of several tarafs , which in their turn consisted of several villages plus some uninhabited mountain and forest land. During the reign of the Bahmani Sultanate in the Deccan , tarafs represented the provinces of the sultanate and its main territorial division. Tarafs were ruled by a tarafdar , the provincial governor, who held a significant amount of autonomy. As
30-516: The equivalent of districts), which were themselves organised into parganas (roughly the equivalent of district subdivisions such as tehsil). In the Mughal system, parganas served as the local administrative units of a sarkar . 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
36-536: The surrounding countryside. Under the reign of Sher Shah Suri , administration of parganas was strengthened by the addition of other officers, including a shiqdar (police chief), an amin or munsif (an arbitrator who assessed and collected revenue) and a karkun (record keeper). In the 16th century the Mughal emperor Akbar organised the empire into subahs (roughly equivalent of state or province), which were further subdivided into sarkars (roughly
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