Decline of Mughal Empire

Discuss the decline of the Mughal Empire. To what extent do you agree that the downfall of the Mughal Empire was caused by the agrarian crisis of the 17th and 18th century? AGRARIAN CRISIS OF MUGHAL EMPIRE by IRFAN HABIB: Various explanations are put forward for the revolts which brought about the collapse of the Mughal Empire. There has existed for a long time the thesis of “Hindu Reaction” as the main factor behind the revolts against Aurangzeb. Its proponents tent, however, to rely more on present sentiment than on contemporary evidence. Main concern is with what 17th and early 18th century texts have to say; and they, at any rate, put the greatest store by the economic and administrative causes of the upheaval and hardly ever refer to religious reaction or consciousness of nationality. The assignment system, as it was established and worked under the great Mughals, necessarily presupposed the prevalence of a certain type of economic order. The jagirs were divorced, as far as possible, from any permanent rights to the land, and were essentially assignments of revenue, assessed in terms of money. This suited best an economy where the cash nexus was well established; but that in turn meant that agrarian trade should have been both brisk and extensive. Both these conditions were present in Mughal India. At the same time, commercial activity could prosper best under an imperial system with its uniform methods of tax collection and administration and its control of the routes. In so far, therefore, as the assignment system strengthened imperial power it also reinforced the economic foundation of its own existence. Unlike the feudal lord of Western Europe, the Mughal jagirdar might not have needed to harbour any fear of money and trade undermining his power. The unity and cohesion of the Mughal ruling class found its practical expression in the absolute power of the emperor. The jagidari as an individual member of the government class had theoretically no right or privileges apart from those received from the emperor: he could not manage his jagir just as he pleased, and was required to conform to imperial regulation. The rate of the land revenue demand and the methods by which it was to be assessed and collected were all prescribed by the imperial administration. The emperor also decreed what other taxes were to be collected. The conduct of the jagirdar and his agents was supposed to be watched over and checked by officials such as qanungos and chaudhuris, and faujdars and news-writers. Imperial revenue policy was obviously shaped by 2 basic considerations. First, since military contingents were maintained by the mansabdars out of the revenues of their jagirs, the tendency was to set the revenue demand so high as to secure the greatest military strength for the empire. But, secondly, it was clear that if the revenue rate was raised so high as to leave the peasant not enough for his survival, the revenue collections could soon fall in absolute terms. The revenue demand as set by the imperial authorities was thus designed ideally to approximate to the surplus produce, leaving the peasant just the barest minimum needed for subsistence. It was this appropriation of the surplus produce that created the great wealth of the Mughal ruling class. The contrast was accordingly striking between “the rich in their great

superfluity and the utter subjection and poverty of the common people”. There seems, moreover to have been a tendency, increasing in its effect with time, to press still harder upon the peasant. This tendency seemed to derive from the very nature of the jagir system. The imperial administration, which could observe the long-term interest of the empire and the ruling class, did, probably, strive to set a limit to the revenue demand. A great increase in revenue demand was approved in the course of 17th century is based on an oversimplified view of the evidence; and there are indications that the increase in cash rates did not outstrip the increase in the prices of the interest agricultural produce. But there was an element of contra ion between the interests of the imperial administration and the individual jagirdar. A jagirdar, whose assignment was liable to be transferred any moment and who never held the same jagir for more than 3 or 4 years at the most, could have no interest in following a far-sighted policy of agricultural development. His personal interests would sanction any act of oppression that conferred an immediate benefit upon him, even if it ruined the peasantry and so destroyed the revenue-paying capacity of that area for long time. Owing to the constant and unpredictable transfers of jagirs, Bhimsen tells us late in Aurangzeb’s reign, the agents of the jagirdars had given up the practice of helping the peasantry or making firm arrangements. Moreover, the ‘amils of the jagirdars were not sure of their own tenures of employment and so,” proceeding tyrannically”, were unrelenting in the collection of revenue. When the jagirdar, instead of appointing his agents to collect the revenue, farmed out the jagir, the evil was worse still. The land was being laid waste, says Sadiq khan, writing of Shahjahan’s reign, through bribery and revenue farming, as a result of which the peasantry was being robbed and plundered. These statements show that in 17th century the belief had become deep-rooted that the system of jagir transfers led inexorably to a reckless exploitation of the peasantry. It was a result which the imperial administration might check for some time but could not ultimately prevent. It was inevitable that the actual burden on the peasantry should become so heavy in some areas as to encroach upon their means of survival. Manuchy, who on this occasion assumes the viewpoint of the ruling class, declares that they have no money. The chastisements and instruments [of torture] are very severe. They are also made to endure hunger and thirst….They feigns death (as sometimes really happens)….but this trick secures them no compassion….Frequently, therefore, the peasants were compelled to sell their women, children and cattle in order to meet the revenue demand. But the enslavement was not generally so voluntary. They are carried off, attached to heavy iron chains, to various market and fair, with their poor, unhappy wives behind them carrying their small children in their arms, all crying and lamenting their evil situation. Failure to pay the revenue was not the only cause for which such punishment was inflicted upon the peasants. It was the general law in Mughal Empire that if any robbery occurred within the assignment or jurisdiction, respective, of a jagirdar or a faujdar, he was obliged to either trace the culprits and recover the loot, or make the payment himself. In Gujarat, a Dutch traveler noted in 1629 that “the peasants are more oppressed than formerly and frequently abscond”, so that the revenues had fallen. What the condition were during the early years of Aurangzeb’s reign may be judged from Bernier’s long discourse on the ills of the Mughal Empire. He too declares that “a considerable portion of the good land remains untilled from the want of peasants”, many of whom “perish in consequence of the bad treatment they receive from the Governors”, or are left no choice but to “abandon

the country”. Bernier sights example of peasants leaving “the country” to “seek a more tolerable mode of existence either in towns or in the camps; as bearers of burdens, carriers of water, or servants to horsemen”. The urban population was large, relatively speaking, and the countryside must have been the source of the innumerable “peons”, and unskilled labourers who filled the towns. The lot of the aimless migrant was not a happy one. A point could accordingly arrive where there was no choice left to the peasant but that between starvation or slavery and armed resistance. It may be unnecessary to say that by willingness the mass of the people were anything but warlike. It is recorded as a peculiarity of Malwa that both the peasants and artisans of the province used to carry arms. Pelsaert (c.1626) observed that despite so much misery and want:”the people endure patiently, professing that they do not deserve anything better”. Nevertheless, there was a limit to endurance. The classic act of defiance on the part of the peasants was the refusal to pay land revenue. But a particular act of oppression committed against them might also goad them into rebellion. They are also frequently alleged to have taken to robbery; Villages and areas, which thus went into rebellion or refused to pay taxes, were known as mawas and zor-talab, as opposed to the revenue-paying village, called raiyati. Usually, the villages, which were protected in some measures by ravines or forests or hills, were more likely to defy the authorities than those in the open plains. Very often acts of defiance by the peasants were mere isolated incidents. The intensity of distress probably varied from village to village, according to the burden of the revenue demand imposed upon each. But distress to be translated into armed resistance required the presence of some other factors as well. Since weaponry was crucial to even the initial success of any act of defiance, the readiness of the upper strata of peasants, possessed of muskets or swords, might often determine whether such an act would take place at all. However, there were still two social forces remained working among the peasantry, which could help to ignite, and extent the scale of such peasant uprisings. The real transformation of peasant unrest was probably brought about by the intervention of elements from the zamindar class that had their own motives in opposing the Mughal ruling class. This came through two distinct processes: either the peasant rebellions, at some stages of their development, passed under the leadership of zamindars or, from the very beginning, the desperation of the peasants provided recruits for rebelling zamindars. The rising of the oppressed thus became inseparable from the conflict between two oppressing classes. Official texts frequently reflect an attitude of hostility towards the zamindars as a class. Abu –l Fazl declares that “the custom of most of the zamindars of Hindustan is that leaving the path of single-mindedness they look to every side and whoever appears more powerful and tumult-raising, they join him”. In southwestern Bengal in 1695-98 the mughal authority was seriously shaken by the rebellion of Sobhs Singh, “the zamindar of Chitwa and Barda”, who was joined by Rahim khan, “the chief of the tribe of the perdition-marked Afghans” of the area: the loyal zamindar of Burdwan was killed, and the area on both sides of the Hugli River ravaged. The struggle between the imperial administration and the zamindars, breaking out frequently into armed conflict, was thus an important feature of the political situation. Under A’zam khan, governor of Gujarat (1632-42), the peasants suffered great oppression, “most of them fled and took refuge with the zamindars in distant places”. A’zam khan thereupon led an expel the peasants who had fled to his territory, so that they might return to their old homes. In Malwa, in 1644, a similar campaign was organized

against the “zamindar” of Ginnur, not only because “the peasants of some of the mahals of the jagir of the governor, who had fled to the territory of Ginnur , evaded paying the revenue as well, being backed in this by those infidels”. The peasants and thus frequently became associated in the struggle against Mughal authorities. The new feature that comes to the fore in the reign of Aurangzeb is, indeed, that the zamindars struggle against the Mughal is no longer merely defensive. As the number of starving, homeless peasants grew and the peasants took to arms themselves, it became possible for the zamindars to organize them into large bands, and even armies, and employ them in predatory warfare with the object of extending their own zamindars or areas of dominance. In 1623 it was reported to the court that of “ganwars and cultivators” on the eastern side of the Yamuna, near Mathura, “do not cease to commit highway robbery and, protected by dense jungle and fastnesses, live in rebellion, have no fear of anyone and do not pay the revenue to the jagirdars”. In 1645 the “rebels” near Mathura were apparently still out of control. Such had been the past history of the area which was to be the cradle of the Jat revolt in the time of Aurangzeb. In the accounts of the earlier revolts, the revolting peasants are not identified as Jats. The usual term for them is ganwar, or villager, and in one or two cases, at least, they were probably led by Rajput zamindars. Nevertheless Manchy, who treats of their revolts in some detail, knows the Jat rebels of Aurangzeb’s reign also as simply “peasants” and assumes them to be the partisans of the same cause as of those whom Akbar had oppressed. The Jat rebellion, properly speaking, dates from the time when Gokula Jat, the zamindar of Talpat near Mathura, “assembled a large army of Jats and other villagers and raised a rebellion”. He was killed in 1670; but the leadership passed to Raja Ram Jat (d.1688) and then to Churaman Jat, who is said to have been the son of a zamindar of 11 villages. Over wide areas the peasants refused to pay revenue and took to arms. In1681 Multafat Khan, the faujdar of the district around Agra, was killed when leading an attack on village whose peasants had refused to pay the revenue. The leadership of the Jat rebellion lay in the hands of zamindars is established not only from the known antecedents of its chief men, but also from their conduct. Churaman, for example, is said to have “seized a number of Churamars [tanners], who are called the menials of Hindus and entrusted [the upkeep of] the ditch [at Bharatpur] to them”. The Jat revolt grew in time into a large plundering movement. This was, perhaps, inevitable under the narrow caste horizons of the peasants and the plundering instincts of their zamindar leaders. The areas devastated expanded from the one pargana of around Agra, sacked by Raja Ram, to its highest extent under Churaman, when “all the parganas under Agra and Delhi had been sacked and plundered and, from the tumult of that perdition-seeker, the routes and ways were blocked”. The Jat rebels had no connection with any particular religious movement. In the Satnami and Sikh rebellions, on the other hand, religion almost entirely replaced caste as the cementing bond among rebel ranks. The Satnamis were a sect of the Bairgis. The traditional date of the foundation of this sect by a native of Narnaul is 1657. The Satnami beliefs, as stated in the sect’s scripture, centred round an unalloyed monothesim. Ritual and superstition were alike condemned, and allegiance was explicitly rendered to Kabir. There was also a definite social aspect of the message. Caste distinctions within the community of believers were forbidden; so also one’s living on the charity of others. An attitude of sympathy with the poor and hostility

towards authority and wealth is apparent from such commandments as the following: “do not harass the poor…shun the company of an unjust king and a wealthy and dishonest man; do not accept a gift from these or from kings”. Such a religion could best appeal to the lower classes. In a possible to them made during the early years of Aurangzeb, a revenue official declared that though certain “cultivators” in a village in the pargana of Bhatnair were “living with their women, children, possessions and cattle in the garb of Bairagis”, they were “not free from the thoughts of sedition and robbery”. The revolt in fact began (1672) as a rural affray. Just as it has been said of Islam that it is a “religion for towns-people”, so it will, perhaps, not wrong to say that Sikhism is a peasant religion. The verses of Guru Nanak “are all in the language of the Jatts of the Punjab. And Jatt in the dialect of the Punjab means a villager, a rustic”. Guru Arjan (d.1606) took the first step in creating a well-knit and disciplined organization. The Sikh became a military power under Guru Hargobind (1606-45), who created an army of his own, and, as a result, came into armed collision with Mughal power. He thus founded a tradition, which was doggedly continued by the last Guru, Gobind Singh (1676-1708), till; finally, in 1709-10 Banda was able to put into the field in sarkar Sirhind “an army of innumerable men, like ants and locusts, belonging to the low castes of Hindus and ready to die” at his orders. The Marathas undoubtedly constituted the greatest single force responsible for the downfall of the Mughal Empire. On the history of their uprising, and the factors that contributed to its genesis and success, so much has been written that it would seem presumptuous to add to the mass. One can, however, legitimately draw attention to the agrarian contexts in which this momentous event took place. Some peasants are not remiss in paying the authorized revenue, but are made desperate by the evil of this excruciating spoliation it came to be represented at the imperial court that the Marathas obtain collaboration from the peasants of the imperial dominions. It was, thereupon, ordered that the horses and weapons found in every village should be confiscated. When this happened in most villages, the peasants, providing themselves with horses and arms, joined the Marathas. Shivaji had used the peasants in a different sphere altogether. They were the “Naked Starved Rascals” who formed much of his army. Armed with “only lances and long sword two inches wide”, they were “good at Surprising and Ransacking”, but not “for a pitched Field”. They had to live by plunder only, for Shivaji’s reputed maxim was: “No Plunder, no pay”. This was the form of salvation which Shivaji and his successors held out to the destitute peasantry of the Dakhin. As Bhimsen’s account shows, the military operations of the Marathas did not offer any relief to the cultivating peasants. On the contrary, they suffered grievously from the ravages of both the Maratha armies and their opponents. In 1671 the castellan of Udgir reported that reported that owing to the operations of “the imperial forces and the villainous enemy” all the peasants had fled the pargana and for two years no revenue had been collected, the Mughal too would burn villages, devastate the crop and enslave men and women. As the range of the conflict grew, and the number of victims increased, a still larger number of the “naked starved rascals”, themselves plundered, had no alternative left but to join the Marathas and become plunderers themselves. And so the unending circle went on. “There is no province or district,” confesses Aurangzeb in his last years, where the infidels have not raised a tumult and since they are not chastised, they have established

themselves everywhere. Most of the country has been rendered desolate and if any place is inhabited, the peasants there have probably come to terms with the ‘Robbers’ [Ashqiya, official Mughal name for the Marathas]… If the peasant distress was at the root of these rebellions that shook the Mughal Empire to its foundations, the rebellions themselves represent a historical paradox in that the alleviation of such distress nowhere forms part of rebels’ proclaimed objectives or of their actual deeds and measures.

Historiographical perspective on the Mughal decline: The history of this phase of the Mughal Empire has generally been written from the perspective of decline of Mughal power. William Irvine and Jadunath Sarkar, who wrote the first detailed histories of this period, attributed the decline to deterioration in the characters of the emperors and their nobles. As Sarkar examined the developments of this period in the context of law and order, he held Aurangzeb to have been the arch-culprit. Aurangzeb was a religious bigot, and therefore failed. He discriminated against certain sections of the nobility who had served the empire like members of a large joint family. Aurangzeb’s successors and their nobles, he suggested, were mere shadows of their predecessors and was thus unable to set right the evils of the legacy of Aurangzeb. This explanation did not lead us beyond the perspective of 17th and 18th centuries’ Persian chroniclers, with the difference that Sarkar also read evidence of a ‘Hindu reaction’ in the Rathor, Bundela, Maratha and Sikh wars against the Mughal Empire. On the contrary, in contemporary sources the rebels and ‘disturbers’ had been identified in terms of either their class, namely, zamindars, or their caste, clan and region. Sarkar’s views and like them, the views of many other historians, are to be seen against the ambience of the time which lent legitimacy to communal interpretation of Indian history in the late-19th and20th centuries. They rightly emphasized Aurangzeb’s attempt to associate the Mughal state with Muslim orthodoxy; but the conclusion that this engendered problems for the empire only from the Hindus and that the ‘Hindu reaction’ was the major cause of the decline is unsatisfactory, since Muslim nobles and officials also reacted to such policies. In 1959 the publication of Satish Chandra’s Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707-40 from Aligarh marked the first serious attempt to study the structural flaws of the Mughal system with a view to understanding the decline of the empire in the 18th century. To Satish Chandra, the stability of the empire as a centralized state in 17th century depended on an efficient working of the mansab and jagir system. The nobles (umara) were the core state official whose position and status in the hierarchy corresponded to their rankings designated in numbers (mansab) and who were paid generally in assignments of land revenue (jagirs). Availability of the revenue to be assigned and the ability of the Mughals to collect them thus became two crucial prerequisites for an effective working of the system. Towards the end of Aurangzeb’s reign the Mughal failure to maintain the system had become too evidence to be concealed any longer. In 1966, from Aligarh appeared yet another major study of the subject in M.Athar Ali’s excellent work on the nobility and their politics in the late-17th century. Athar Ali provided quantitative support to Satish Chandra’s study. In these two studies, the problems attending the annexation of the Deccan states, the absorption of the Marathas and the Deccanis into the Mughal nobility, and the subsequent shortage of jagirs have the pride of place.

In recent symposium on the decline of the Mughal Empire, J.F.Richards, M.N.Pearson and P.Hardy also give a pivotal position to the Mughal involvement in the Deccan and the Maratha land. But the participants of this symposium also try to modify the explanations offered by Aligarh historians. Pearson noticed a basic flaw in the Mughal system. Mughal rule, he argues, was ‘very indirect’ and it was not state control but local ties and norms which governed ‘the lives of most people most of the time’. Pearson emphasizes the absence of an impersonalized bureaucracy, its consequences for the Mughal state and thus reaffirms an oft-repeated explanation for the absence of successful states in Asia and Africa in pre-modern times. There is no denying the fact that the personal achievements and failures of the emperors their declining military fortunes weighted considerably with the nobles. Pearson‘s formulation, however, is not borne out from the details of the history of our period. Muzaffar Alam’s study shows that not only the small group of nobles (umara) but also the zamindars, the village and qasba-based madad-i ma’ash holders and a very large number of lower-level officials drawn from various regional and local communities were all integrated intimately into the framework of the empire. The Mughal Empire rested on a balancing of these diverse interests. But it is true that the imperial system could not fully override, let alone obliterate the landlorders’ primary attachments to local groups, in particular those of kin, clan and caste. The empire signified a coordinating agency between conflicting communities and the various indigenous socio-political system at different levels. The basis of the empire, in a measure, had been negative; its strength had lain in the inability of the local communities and their systems to mobilize beyond relatively narrow bounds. Political integration in Mughal India was, up to a point, inherently flawed. It was conditional on the coordination of the interests and the political activities of the various social groups lad by local magnates. This, in turn, was dependent on the latter realizing that they could not make fortunes by themselves. The thrust of the nobles’ action in our period, and their Endeavour towards independent political alignment with the zamindar in order to crave out their own fortunes, were not absolutely incompatible with earlier development. J.F.Richards makes a valuable contribution to an explanation of the problems of Mughal administration in the late-17th and 18th centuries. He demolishes the long-held belief that the Deccan was a deficit areas from which had sprung the belief that be-jagiri was the major cause of the decline of the Mughal Empire. Considering newly discovered archival sources, Satish Chandra makes a clear distinction between be-jagiri and the crisis in the jagirdari system in a review of his explanation of the decline of the Mughal Empire. Central to the growth of the crisis of the jagirdari system, as he suggests in this study, was its non-functionality—not the growth in the size of the ruling class and the corresponding decline in the revenues earmarked to be assigned in jagirs (paibaqi). Richards is right in stressing the role of ‘the local warrior aristocracies’ for any analysis of the problems of the Mughal administration in the late-17th century and early 18th century. Satish Chandra hints at the possibility of a ‘tripolar relationship’ between the jagirdars, zamindars, and the khudkashtas (resident cultivators) having been the principal factor in the stability of the Mughal Empire. Nowhere, however, has the dynamic of these relationships been linked to the social conditions of those constituting them: the jagirdars, the zamindars and the peasants. Richards sometimes explains ‘the imperial crisis’ in terms of the emperor’s decisions and policies.

The Mughal decline has also been explained in terms of participation in 18th century politics of groups conventionally regarded as non-political. Karen Leonard argues that ‘indigenous banking firms were indispensable allies of the Mughal state’, and that the great nobles and imperial officers ‘were more than likely to be directly dependent upon these firms’. When in the period 1650-1750 these banking firms began ‘the redirection of their economic and political support’ towards nascent regional polities and rulers, including the British East India Company in Bengal, this led to bankruptcy, the ensuing series of political crises and the ‘downfall of the empire’. The premises on which Leonard build her conclusion do not get adequate support from the existing studies of Mughal polity and economy; yet her explanation is worth considering and cannot be dismissed summarily. Philip Calkins was the first to take serious note of merchants and bankers in his analysis of political formation in the 18th century Bengal. In Pearson’s study of Gujarat there is some convincing evidence of the merchants’ participation in politics. Still, Pearson refrains from the suggesting that the Mughal finance system was dependent on merchants’ credit. Calkins also limits his generalization to the period and the region he examines and refrains from attributing the stability of the empire to merchant participation in earlier periods or in other regions. Without any fresh evidence to support her contention, Leonard extents further what Calkins and Pearson have suggested with rather unfair and exaggerated emphasis on the role of bankers. Societal ‘crisis’ is the dominant note in the writing of Cantwell Smith, K.M.Ashraf, Irfan Habib and Athar Ali. The Mughal Empire, according to them, declined as society failed to produce enough surpluses to sustain a vast all-Indian polity. In other words, economic failure, at least, coincided with, if they did not actually precede, political decline. Richard Barnett has considered briefly political formation in Awadh against the backdrop of imperial disintegration. But his interest seems to be more in the latter half of the 18th century. The process of the subordination of all offices and authorities within a region to the governor and, simultaneously, the governor’s acquisition of a practically independent and hereditary position needs to be studied in greater depth. Local political and administrative problems were reflected in changes in the actions and positions of the various social groups, particularly, the zamindars, the madad-i ma’ash grantees and the mansab holders, which in turn compelled governors to adopt new policies that could only be implemented at the expense of imperial authority or those sections of the nobility which remained outside the province. While examining political realignment in the provinces, it can be seen that local and regional social groups were emerging as powerful forces. Muzaffar Ali have thus tried to study the history of the period in the context of the Mughal imperial centre, namely, the emperor, the nobles posted at the court or outside the provinces under review on the one hand and the region, on the other. The interactions of these elements have also been scrutinized. The stages of the breakaway from the centre- of individuals, of social groups, of communities, and of regions- have been studied with a view to understanding the nature of political transformation in the 18th century. Both Awadh and Punjab provinces were extremely important to Mughal Indian. They lay in close proximity to the capital and were fully integrated into the empire at the beginning of the period of our study. The Punjab linked the Mughal Empire, through commercial, cultural and ethnic intercourse, with Persia and Central Asia. On the other hand Awadh – together with the northern parts of the Mughal province of Allahabad- was the gateway to the eastern province.

In early 18th century in both these provinces, politics and administration appear to have moved along similar lines. The local officials faced stiff resistance from the zamindars and the peasants to the exercise of the imperial control. The governors sought wide powers in order to bring provincial finance and all other officers eventually under their own control. During the later phases of our period, however, development in these provinces began to diverge. In Awadh the governor could mobilize local social groups around his own banner and was thus able to place nawabi rule on the firm ground; in the Punjab the new subadari collapsed and there was total chaos and confusion towards the end of our period. Given this divergence the history of these provinces appears to be especially amenable to an examination of issues concerning both the decline of the imperial authority and the circumstances that caused and accompanied emergent political formation in the provinces. The shift from control of peripheries by the provinces was significant. But such was the myth and influence of Delhi that no regional power could replaces it as the centre in the18th century.