Concept Of Medieval In South Asia

The concept of medieval in South Asia has been a long and contested one. The concept of medieval and was firstly introduced by the colonial administrators.
Medieval is a highly debated concept. The reasons which make this concept a debated are chronological uncertainty, model building and different.
As far as relation of medieval with India term is concerned, this term was introduced to India during the colonial encounter, before that, medieval was not known to India. In our national language medieval is Madhyakalan.
Introduction of medieval in South Asian history is clearly an adoption of western historical writings because of a simple reason that the term ‘medieval’ is not an South Asian term.

As far as placement of the term Medieval in
There were proofs and evidence that in the Indian medieval period there were powerful Hindu empires such as Cholas, Pandyas, Calukyas and Sangams but all these were in south. But still in Indian universities, Ancient and Medieval is understood with Hindu and Muslim respectively.

To answer the question of economy and society under Medieval India, different historians and scholars gave there different point of views. Marxist scholars introduced the theory of Indian feudalism based on the principle of mode of production and social formation. They took land grants to represent alienation of the state. They also stated that there were wider economic transformation in terms of economic exchange, decline in trade and decline of urban centers
Scholars such as Chattopadhyaya and Herman Kulke being Marxist introduced the processural and integrative model which talked about agrarian expression, urban transformation etc.
Chattopadhayaya also stated that making of early medieval India was a positive development in terms of new social phenomena. For eg: this period witnessed increased clearing and settlement of uncultivated lands, growth of nuclear rural settlements, transformation of non- state societies into state societies
And they also stated that there was no decline in trade both internal and over -seas.
Much of the early information about the medieval India comes by persian and mughal texual sources.
Historians, whether colonial or national such as Dhdhabai Naroji, Romesh Chanader dutt, Whmore land stated that economics problems such as low standard of living, widespread poverty were there in Mughal empire.
Other of the Marxist view eg Irfan Habib, athar ali, Nurul Hasan stated that high revenue demands by state, rural exploitation, agrarian crisis were there in the later half of the mughal empire. Important to note here is that Irfan habib being a Marxist stated that mughal dynasty was not a feudal one but a unique Indian medieval system. There was a system in the mughals which was called mansabdari system. It was a system of rank and position.
As far as understanding religion in medieval is cocernedd, us and European scholors lead there. They focus on matters such as state policies towards religious policies, religion conflicts, etc.study of Sufism had also played an important role in understanding the interaction between muslim and non- muslim