zamindar

American  

[zuh-meen-dahr] / zə minˈdɑr /

Or zemindar

noun

1. (in British India) a landlord required to pay a land tax to the government.

2. (in Mogul India) a collector of farm revenue, who paid a fixed sum on the district assigned to him.

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zamindar British  

/ zəmiːnˈdɑː /

noun

1. (in India) the owner of an agricultural estate

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Etymology

Origin of zamindar

1675–85; < Hindi < Persian zamīndār landholder, equivalent to zamīn earth, land + -dār holding, holder

Example Sentences

In India’s past, agrarian crisis and extreme indebtedness led to riots and demonstrations against zamindar landlords who controlled rural wealth.

From Salon

Partition, as books in recent years by Yasmin Khan and Vazira Zamindar have shown, was a different process depending on which part of it you were caught up in.

From The Guardian

The theory eventually circulated that Boori Ma had once worked as hired help for a prosperous zamindar back east, and was therefore capable of exaggerating her past at such elaborate lengths and heights.

From Literature

Vazira Zamindar’s excellent recent study, “The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia,” opens with an account of Ghulam Ali, a Muslim from Lucknow, a city in central North India, who specialized in making artificial limbs.

From The New Yorker

His grandfather migrated from east Bengal in 1911, and so pleased a local zamindar, or feudal landlord, that he was eventually awarded the land he tilled, which now amounts to 11 acres divided between eight brothers.

From New York Times