English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Urdu زمیندار (zamīndār).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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zamindar (plural zamindars)

  1. (South Asia, historical) An 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,[1]
      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.
    • 1997, Arundhati Roy, chapter 2, in The God of Small Things[2], New York: Random House, page 63:
      An Oxford avatar of the old zamindar mentality―a landlord forcing his attentions on women who depended on him for their livelihood.
    • 2004, Khushwant Singh, Burial at Sea, Penguin, published 2014, page 6:
      Indian princes, zamindars and industrialists engaged him as their counsel and paid him whatever he asked for as fees.
    • 2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, Penguin, published 2015, page 39:
      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.
    • 2017, Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations, Penguin, page 402:
      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.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Further reading

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Indonesian

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Noun

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zamindar (first-person possessive zamindarku, second-person possessive zamindarmu, third-person possessive zamindarnya)

  1. landlord, zamindar