SakshamSharma
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Graduate Student
The Mughal Empire which had dazzled the times by its extensive of territories, military might and cultural achievements a showed unmistakable sign of decay towards the start of the eighteenth century. The reign of Aurangzeb was the swan-song of the Mughal rule India. An elaborate disease struck the centre of the empire and gradually spread to different parts. While nine Mughal emperors followed each other in quick succession within the fifty years following the death of Aurangzeb, many adventures, Indian and foreign, carved out independent principalities for themselves. Mughal governors of Oudh, Bengal and also the Deccan freed themselves from the control of the central government and thus the Hindu powers found the time opportune for assertion of their independence. Invaders from the north-west repeated their incursions in search of wealth so the trading companies dabbled in Indian politics. Notwithstanding all these dangers, internal and external, so great had been the prestige of the empire under the good Mughals so strong the central structure that the dissolution was slow and a long-drawn-out process. Baji Rao I ‘s raid of Delhi (1737) and Nadir Shah ‘s invasion (1739) exposed the hollowness of the Mughal Empire and by 1740 the autumn of the Empire was an accomplishment.
Although the expansion of the Mughal Empire reached its peak under the rule of Emperor Aurangzeb and expanded it to 21 regional divisions with the goal of effective control and its weakness was to weaken the centre. Take into consideration; From the undeveloped means of communication in those days, the Mughal Empire faced much more stupid work than the ability to speak of the weak successors of Aurangzeb. Whatever compulsions he had, Aurangzeb tried to revive the Islamic character of the state he believed in, he was disturbed by Akbar and his successors. His policy of spiritual fanaticism proved to be counterproductive and sparked general discontent within the country and thus the empire faced revolts of the Sikhs, the Jats, the Bundelas, the Rajputs and, above all, the Marathas. Aurangzeb was no les stupid than his contemporary King of Great Britain of England.
Like James II, Aurangzeb knew the art of
making enemies. His imperialist creations and narrow religious policy made the
Rajputs, the trusted supporters of the imperial dynasty, enemies. However, the
processes of collapse have therefore led to intense debate among historians
about the emergence of regional states. It is also a difficult matter that
scholarly opinions are shared more quickly than other aspects of Mughal
history. The historical perspective on the fall of the Mughals can also be
divided into two broad parts. First, the Mughal-centric approach, i.e.,
historians identify and identify the causes of the decline in the very structure
and functioning of the empire. Second, the field-centric approach was
appearing for reasons of turmoil or instability in some parts of the empire
tends to go beyond the realm of empire. William Irwin and Jadunath
Sarkar wrote the first detailed history of this. According to many
historians, Aurangzeb was a religious fanatic. He discriminated against the
aristocracy and the departments of the officers, on the grounds Religion. This
caused widescale resentment among the nobles. He argued Aurangzeb's successors
and his nobles were only shadows of his predecessors and the range was unable
to set the evils of Aurangzeb's legacy.
Satish Chandra's publication of Mughal parties and politics in Court (1959), marked the first serious attempt to study formation of the Mughal Empire. It had both operations and its plans investigated to understand the nature of the empire and its subsequent masons’ reduction. Studied the operations of some of Satish Chandra's key institutions Empire.
The two institutions he examined were
Manasbadari and Jagirdari. According to Chandra, the fall of the Mughals was to
be seen in the failure of the Mughals, until the end of Aurangzeb's reign, to
maintain the mansabdar-jagirdar system. As the system fell into disarray, the
empire was bound to collapse.
Athar Ali's aristocracy and his work on politics appeared
in the late seventeenth century in 1966. The problems present in the annexation
of the Deccan states in this work, the exploitation of the Marathas and Deccanis
in the Mughal aristocracy and subsequently the lack of jagir. The sudden
increase in the number of nobles due to the expansion of the empire in the
Deccan and Maratha regions put a strain on the functioning of the jagir system.
According to Athar Ali, the aristocracy competed for a better estate, which was
becoming scarce due to the influx of aristocrats from the south. The logical
consequence was an erosion in the political structure that was largely based on
feudalism.
According to Irfan Habib, the revenue collected by the Mughals was developed which was inherently flawed. The imperial policy was to fix revenue at the highest rate to secure the empire, the greatest power of the military power for the nobility. On the second hand, they also tended to squeeze maximum from their estates and destroyed the ability to pay the income of the area. Since the aristocracy was responsible for frequent relocations, they did not feel the need to pursue a far-sighted policy of agricultural development. As the burden on farmers increased, they were often deprived of much of their resources. In response to this excessive exploitation of the peasantry, the latter had no choice but to protest. Forms of rural protest in medieval India were of various natures such as farmers migrating to many areas. Entire villages became desolate due to large-scale migration of farmers to towns or other villages. Many times, the peasants protested against the state by refusing to pay the revenue and laid down arms against the Mughals. Habib argued that the political and social structure of the empire was weakened by these peasant protests.
M.N. Pearson in his revelation of the fall of the Mughal
Empire, gives an important place to the involvement of the Mughals in the
Deccan and the affairs of the Marathas. The Mughal rule was indirect. It was
not state control but local relations and norms that governed people’s lives.
The concept of the Mughal Empire gained more administration than other
"primitive alliances." The aristocracy was bound to the empire only
by support, based on "continued military success." He emphasizes the
absence of solid bureaucracy, and not very optimistic results for the Mughal
state. Once the support of the Mughals slowed down due to the lack of further
military expansion, and after the scarcity of fertile areas for allotment even
as the jagir, the "personal bureaucracy" of the Mughal Empire showed
signs of distress. This is really a death knell for the Mughal system.
In the 1970s, J. F. Richards added a new twist to the doctrine of the fall of the Mughals which was a major cause of the fall of the Mughal Empire. Using material collected from the Golconda, Richards questioned the long-held belief that the Deccan was the deficit area that had arisen. The feudal crisis was of an administrative and managerial nature. He argued that the expansion of the revenue resources of the empire after the annexation of the Deccan states had kept pace with this. The expansion of the aristocracy in the second half of Aurangzeb's reign. Deliberate decision to keep a very lucrative estate under the Khalsa as part of a financial asset to provide for a continuous campaign, in Karnataka and against the Marathas. Thus, the crisis was an administrative one.
In the 1980s, Satish Chandra's research
solved the jagir problem to some imit. He used newly discovered archival
sources to clarify the difference between crisis in bejaqiri and Jagirdari. The Jagirdari system did not come about due to
the increase in the size of the ruling class and a corresponding reduction in
income has been assigned to Jagirdar. Tripartite relationship between farmers,
zamindar and Mansabdar formed the base on which the Mughal families rested. Collection,
keeping land revenue from landlords and Engagement in agricultural production
was the key to the successful work of the Jagir system. If possible, Jagirdar
could do his job properly maintain its military power. This of course was based
on their ability to collect adequate income and resources from his estate in
order. To maintain the necessary troopers any factor that could disrupt this
neat balance. The Jagirdar-Zamindar-farmer dimension eventually caused the
collapse of the Empire.
They further argue that the original basis of
feudalism was the medieval social system that limited agricultural development.
The administration was overwhelmed by the composition, both acting and reacting
to each other. All other factors such as the increase in the size of the ruling
class and the vague lifestyle of the aristocracy contribute to the factors of
slow economic growth and crisis development.
The fall of the Mughals is also explained on
the status of the participation of nineteenth-century groups traditionally
considered non-political. Karen Leonard argues that domestic banking companies
were indispensable allies of the Mughal Empire, and that the great aristocracy
was more likely to be based directly on trading companies. While the new
banking companies started redirection to regional politics and their economic
and political support towards the rulers, including the Anglo-East Indian
Company of Bengal in the period 15050-15050. Bankruptcy, along with a series of
political crises, is considered to be the main cause of the collapse of the
empire.
Muzaffar Alam and Chetan Singh have used a focused approach in their field to explain the fall of the Mughals. While Alam has made a comparative study of the development of the Mughal subhas of Awadh and the Punjab, Chetan Singh has made a unique study of the regional history of the Punjab in the 17th century. His studies are remarkable in that they shed new light on the nature of the Mughal Empire as well as its weakening and eventual decline in the early 17th and 18th centuries.
Looking at the Mughal Empire from the
perspective of the regional literature of the Mughal subhas of Awadh, Alam
suggests that the Mughal Empire signed as a coordinating agency between
conflicting communities at different levels and different indigenous
socio-political systems. At one point the base of the empire remained negative;
Its power puts local communities and their systems at a disadvantage in moving
beyond relatively narrow boundaries. Political unification in Mughal India was,
at one stage, inherently flawed. It was largely conditional on the coordination
of the interests and political activities of the various social groups, led to
a local extent. This, in turn, depended on the latter that they could not get
luck on their own. As it was very clear that the aristocracy depended directly
on the emperor who appointed them for their appointment and power. They have no
hereditary colony that they can collect their offspring or give them a
tendency. Their resources were tested and regulated by the empire. He was in a
way a representative of the Mughal emperor. Yet the nobility also had its
stresses. The policy of feudal transfer was to strengthen the imperial
organization, testing the ambition to create a noble personal base. But the
nobles who opposed and resisted its implementation were inconvenienced. In many
regions of the Mughal Empire, it came into force in the 17th century.
According to Alam, the decline of the Mughals
in the early 18th century saw the inability of the state to maintain a policy
of inquiry and balance between landlords, feudal lords and local indigenous
elements.
In the early 18th century, the aristocracy
sought independent political alliances with landlords. Attempts were also made
between the various co-partners of Mughal power to encroach on each other's
rights and territorial jurisdictions. This development was not entirely
inconsistent with what had happened before. But the Hay-Day of the Empire
included this tension. This was achieved by the use of military force at this
time and by balancing the power of a social group by stabilizing the
surroundings at other times.
Alam's main concern is to analyse what happened in the early 18th century due to a misunderstanding of social and political balance. He is of the opinion that in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, at least in the Awadh and Punjab areas, haphazard economic growth was recorded. This is in stark contrast to the general argument about the beginning of the 18th century due to the financial crisis by Satish Chandra and others. The social groups that had hitherto shared Mughal power and contributed to the political stability of the empire, now began to take advantage of the economic boom in their territories. Many of them amassed wealth that helped them increase their power to encroach on the rights and conveniences of others. The political formation of the empire was bound to counter this development. Muzaffar Alam concluded that the fall of the Mughal Empire was manifested in a kind of political change in both Awadh and Punjab and the emergence and outline of new subadari elements. Origin for the emergence of independent regional units was present in both provinces. But in Punjab it ended in chaos, while in Awadh a stable dynasty ruled.
Chetan Singh in his book Region and Empire takes a
new look at the regional history of the Mughal North India. The history of the
Mughal subhas of the Punjab has been constructed in the context of both Mughal
politics as well as the vast political changes that have taken place in the
contemporary West Asian world. He argues that the Mughal administrative
structure links any message to the Mughal administrative origins. Yet, this traditional
form of integration had its limitations. Were for local society and humility.
The Mughal government system faced various stresses by violating the
administrative and administrative divisions and sub-divisions and the administration
was both normal administration where practical consideration relieved the
formation of local office fees and the work they did as well as the relief of
revenue administration. Over time in revenue administration, some norms and
conventions developed which contributed to the stability of the Mughal Empire
with formal rules and regulations.
However, by the end of the 17th century,
siltation of the Indus River had an impact on river traffic in the Punjab. Its
most serious impact was the gradual erosion of the highly commercialized Punjab
economy. Political turmoil in contemporary Turkey, the mountain of Kandahar
fell on the Shah of Iran and underground traffic was stabilized by the Mughals'
efforts to recapture it. This development took place in the North West Punjab
with the Yusufzai Uprising (1667) and the Afridi Uprising in 1678. Singh argues
that this political disruption has a lot of social and economic consequences
for Punjab: they disrupted trade and gradually misdirected the economy which was
the basis. Commercial agricultural sector. Due to the socio-economic structure
of Punjab, social unrest spread in Punjab. However, he claimed that due to
unequal distribution of trade and commerce benefits in the region, the unrest
caused by the decline in trade in different parts of Punjab was varied. Thus,
those who were most closely associated with the Sikh uprising in the area were
those who were also very commercialized. Therefore, most easily affected by
economic stress. Thus, it turns out, the social unrest that eventually led to
the separation of the Punjab from the empire was the product of long-term
processes. These processes were operating peacefully and steadily even before
the empire's political weakness gained momentum in the 18th century.
Thus, from the point of view of the regional history of the Punjab, a different picture emerges from the disintegration of the empire. Different subahs of the empire were separated from it for different reasons, but were often dispersed due to political, social and economic development outside the sphere of influence of the Mughal empire.
It is difficult to find an explanation for the
problems of the Mughal Empire, which is generally applicable in all its
territories and provinces. For the same reason it is difficult to accept the
view of the fall of the Mughals which applies equally to all parts of the
Mughal Empire. It best represents the consensus of both the centre and the
periphery. In the early 18th century, this consensus was disrupted. The
different peripheries that make up an empire follow different paths of their
own development. The regional history of the twentieth century suggests an
attempt to use the possibilities for survival.
Apparently, the perspective of the regional history of the fall of the Mughals rejects the application of a general theory to explain the fall of the Mughals throughout India. For the Mughal Empire, at best, represents the consensus between the centre and the periphery. The peripheries were integrated not only administratively but also into the Mughal corps. Since there was an economic and cultural connection between the winner and the looser. It was at certain shared economic and cultural spaces that the constitution of the Mughal state rested. The territories connected by these heterogeneous alliances with the Mughal corps would be sensitive to a variety of social, economic and cultural changes in 17th century Mughal India. Different regions were affected in different ways. While links with Mughal origins were broken in some regions, they were retained in others. It was logical that different regions followed different routes of separation from the Mughal Empire. The fall of the Mughals was more complicated than historians accepted the Mughal-centric approach.
In the February issue of I976, Professor M. N. Pearson attempted to analyse the determinants of the fall of the Mughal Empire. While putting Aurangzeb in a daze he argues that whatever the death knell of the great empire was sounded by the emergence of Shivaji and his masters as parallel powerful bodies. To make matters worse, while Aurangzeb made a general mistake in his dealings with Maharashtra, Pearson's assessment was that his reckless and skilful management of the rebels was crucial. Some of these instances are as follows:
1. 1657, when, as subedair of the Deccan, he
failed to avail himself of the opportunity of crushing Shivaji, who had not yet
grown too powerful;
2. I659, when Shaista Khan's debacle occurred;
3. I664, when Shivaji sacked Surat with impunity;
4. 1666,
when the arch-rebel was presented to the Emperor at Agra.
Shivaji and his group of followers were
undoubtedly a formidable force in the late seventeenth century, and the fact is
that Aurangzeb and his nobles failed to suppress them. It can also be admitted
that the Marathas their perseverance, ruthlessness, and zeal contributed
greatly to the general weakness of the empire and to the erosion of imperial
prestige, time, and power. But the Marathas did not exist as a political
institution when Akbar died; They emerged and flourished in the decades that
followed. His main asset was his large and growing power of followers.
Aurangzeb, however, did not find out the causes of inflammation of the Marathas
order, nor did he investigate the flow from the royal domains into the Marathas
arms of men. Instead, Aurangzeb launched a 25 yearlong campaign to reduce the
uprising. In other words, he left the work to find the cause of the trouble,
and limited himself to dealing with the resulting phenomenon of Maratha power.
Pursuing primarily Aurangzeb, Pearson also focuses almost entirely on the
boundaries of his empire, ignoring the facts of origin, character, composition,
and circumstances that contribute to the emergence of the power of merit. Large
migrations from the stable trade and base of able-bodied men are usually
prompted by political insecurity, social barriers or economic crises. Although,
it seems that the Marathas were in fact the result of some unfortunate
developments on the occasions of large movements in the rebel camps under the
imperial rule in earlier decades. Therefore, as the imperial weapons made their
steady progress in victory, they only increased the size and power of mastery,
not even Aurangzeb or other rebellious states began to think twice before
committing themselves further. The land of each yard acquired by Aurangzeb took
at least one person to seek refuge and livelihood with Marathas.
There was an inherent flaw in the Mughal
military system. The army was increasingly organized on a feudal basis where
the common soldier was loyal to the mansabdar rather than the king. The soldier
saw Mansabdar as his chief, not as an officer. However, the shortcomings of
this system were evident in the revolts of Bairam Khan and Mahabat Khan, which
assumed alarming proportions under later Mughal kings.
William Irwin points out that the disciplines of the fallen
Mughals - discipline, harmony, luxurious habits, poor commissionership of
inactivity and each other's shortcomings for cumbers' equipment - were found.
The army and laziness pervaded every position in the army and the grand march
of the Mughal army featured elephants, and long carts of oxen, mingled with
crowds of camp-followers, women of all ranks, merchants, shopkeepers, servants,
ministers, and all kinds of luxuries. was ten times the number of men fighting.
The difference in fighting ability was nothing more than the armed rocks of the Mughal army. Bernier compares them to a herd of animals that had previously fled in shock. Mughal artillery was crude and ineffective against the guerrilla tactics of the Marathas; Maratha soldiers who could not be easily captured by British weapons despite repeated attempts by Maratha soldiers. The main drawback of the Mughal army of the first century was their composition. Soldiers were usually drawn from Central Asia and collected by captains of companies who provided men with whatever they could afford. These soldiers and their leaders came to India to make a fortune to lose them. As such, the leaders came to make India lucky not to lose. Thus, the leaders of such armies changed parties without any intrusion and they were constantly conspiring to betray or support their master. The Mughal viceroy was also constantly employing such an army out of fear of the desert. Without consistency or loyalty such mercenaries were incapable defenders of the interests of the empire.
Bibliography/References:
·
Satish
Chandra, Medieval India: Society, the Jagirdari Crisis and the Village, Delhi,
1982
·
Lakshmi
Subramanian, History of India 1707-1857, Orient Blackswan, 2010
·
Meena
Bhargava, The Decline of the Mughal Empire, Oxford University Press, 2014
·
Satish
Chandra, The Jagirdari Crisis: A Fresh Look
·
Irfan
Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707
·
J.F.
Richards, The Imperial Crisis in the Deccan
·
M.N.
Pearson, Shivaji and the decline of the Mughal Empire
·
Karen
Leonard, The ‘Great Firm’ theory of the decline of the Mughal Empire
·
M.A.
Ali, The passing of the Empire, The Mughal Case
·
Muzaffar
Alam, From the crisis of Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and Punjab,
1707-48
·
Stewart
Gordon, The slow conquest: Administrative integration of Malwa into the Maratha
Empire, 1720-60
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