During the Mughal period, peasants who were residents of the village and cultivated their own land were called:

During the Mughal period, peasants who were residents of the village in which they held their lands were called "khud-kashta".

Khud-kashta and pahi-kashta:

• NCERT explains that Indo-Persian sources of the Mughal period distinguished between two kinds of peasants:
• Khud-kashta: residents of the village in which they held their lands.
• Pahi-kashta: non-resident cultivators, who belonged to some other village but cultivated lands elsewhere on a contractual basis.
• People became pahi-kashta either by choice (for example, when terms of revenue in a distant village were more favourable) or out of compulsion (for example, because of economic distress after a famine).

The peasant household:

• NCERT notes that the average peasant of north India seldom possessed more than a pair of bullocks and two ploughs; most had even less.
• In Gujarat, peasants who possessed about six acres of land were considered well-to-do.
• In Bengal, five acres was the upper limit of an average peasant farm; ten acres would make one a rich peasant.
• Cultivation was based on the principle of individual ownership.

The village community:

• The village community consisted of three groups: the cultivators, the panchayat, and the village headman (muqaddam or mandal).
• The village panchayat was an assembly of elders, usually the important people of the village with hereditary rights over their property.
• The headman supervised the preparation of village accounts, assisted by the accountant (patwari).

Zamindars:

Zamindars were a class who lived off agriculture but did not directly participate in the processes of production; they had rights over land and collected revenue.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Pahi-kashta were non-resident cultivators.
• ✗A muqaddam was the village headman.
• ✗A zamindar was a landholder who collected revenue.