Agrarian Structure and Social Change: Cooch Behar

Abstract

Cooch Behar has been transformed from an earlier kingdom to a State and from a State to the present status of a district. By colonial intervention (1772) the state was transformed into a quasi-feudal State. Several settlements had occurred by the East-India Company in the consecutive years. It fabricated a new social order in terms of caste hierarchies and caste differences. A group of people who migrated from the adjacent state of Cooch Behar to hold the lease of Land as well as administrative posts. This phenomenon created a complexity in the society where the best parts of Rajbashi were marginalized.