zamindar

plural zamindars · alternative zemindar · alternative zumeendar · alternative Zumeendar

1. South AsiahistoricalAn Indian landowner who collected local taxes and paid them to the British government.

   1861, Henry Mayhew et al., London Labour and the London Poor, London: C. Griffin, Volume 4, p. 120, In Bengal there were […] many female zemindars, or village revenue administrators, who were, however, subject to the influence, but not to the authority, of the male members of their family.

   4 more examples

   An Oxford avatar of the old zamindar mentality―a landlord forcing his attentions on women who depended on him for their livelihood.

   1997, Arundhati Roy, chapter 2, in The God of Small Things, New York: Random House, page 63

   Indian princes, zamindars and industrialists engaged him as their counsel and paid him whatever he asked for as fees.

   2004, Khushwant Singh, Burial at Sea, Penguin, published 2014, page 6

   Thus it happened that the approach of the Ibis was witnessed by Raja Neel Rattan Halder, the zemindar of Raskhali, who was on board the palatial barge with his eight-year-old son and a sizeable retune of attendants.

   2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, Penguin, published 2015, page 39

   The power of the zamindars, who were mainly Brahmin or Rajput, was challenged in a series of peasant movements between 1919 and 1921, when Charan Singh was in his late teens.

   2017, Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations, Penguin, page 402