By M. N. PEARSON
Some
Theories of Mughal Decline
The decline of the Mughal empire is usually considered to begin late.in the reign of the emperor Aurangzib (1658-1707). The favorite explanations consist of circles, or even spirals, usually vicious in nature. One important interpretation sees the decline as originating from an increased taxation burden on the peasantry, who revolted in several areas, ultimately with such success that the empire was weakened. More money was needed to crush more revolts, so there was more oppressive taxation and so more revolts.1 This is less than convincing, for peasant revolts—whether or not led by zamindars (locally important land-holders)—were more or less a constant in Mughal India. They were particularly prevalent in Gujarat and Bengal, but Hindustan was far from exempt. What we really need here is an attempt at a quantitative assessment of the number of revolts, and of participants in them, during the whole seventeenth century.
A
second interpretation, associated particularly with the work of M. Athar Ali,
finds the consequences of the move south crucial, for this resulted in more
nobles chasing an almost static pool of resources. The Mughals were unable to
defeat their Maratha enemies in the south, and so resorted to bribery, mostly
in the form of high mansabs (ranks) in the Mughal nobility. As a result there
was an influx of new nobles, and not enough good jagirs (land revenue
assignments) to support them. They had to be given land in unsubdued or
infertile areas, and so were unable to support their sawar (military) ranks.
Consequently, military performance declined further, bribery had to be used
more often, and so on.2 There are some weaknesses in Athar Ali's calculation of
the rate of increase in the nobility under Aurangzib, for the two periods into
which he divides Au rangzib's reign are of unequal length, and he makes no
effort to account for nobles who carried over from the preceding reign or
period. Nevertheless, even when his calculations are corrected, there still
clearly was a large rise in the numbers of nobles late in the seventeenth
century. A more central problem is to work out what resources were available to
pay them and their troops; here, Professor Richards' accompanying paper makes
an important contribution.
Finally,
a different line of attack tends to see the Mughal empire as still strong and
effective to the end of Aurangzib's reign, and even beyond.3 Among the
evidences cited to bolster this is the continued loyal activities of some
nobles late in the seventeenth century, and the continuance well into the
eighteenth century of the sending of tribute from Ben gal and other places to
the Mughal emperors. If nothing else, such claims point to the need for more research,
for they raise serious questions concerning such matters as the proportion of
total provincial revenue sent to the center at different times, and the nature
of "loyalty," "legitimacy," and "independence" in
eighteenth-century India.
These
questions cannot detain us now. Rather, it seems more profitable to return to
the explanations of those who believe the empire was in trouble by late in
Aurangzib's reign, for we share in this opinion; we simply differ as to the
causes. Circles and spirals, especially vicious ones, are certainly pictorially
attractive, but they do not start from nothing; something has to happen
somewhere to get the empire into the circle. Various theories are put forward
here, but they all find the root problem in Aurangzib's move south. This
happened in 1681-82, and is variously—or in combination—ascribed to his desire
to root out the heretical or semi-infidel rulers of Golconda and Bijapur to the
south of his empire; to the "imperatives" of Indian history, which
see every strong ruler of north India as desirous of ruling the whole
subcontinent; or to a desire to crush the Maratha revolt.
The
"imperatives of Indian history" interpretation requires a brief
elaboration. Percival Spear presents a common view when he says that "It
[geography] has encouraged aspirations to empire. . . ."4 At first sight,
this is tempting. The subcontinent is clearly a well-defined geographic unit:
what could be more natural than for an established empire, usually in the
north, to attempt to complete the conquest by moving south? The subcontinent is
a graspable area, almost an island, and it seems logical to hold it all. Unlike
a strong empire in Eurasia, there is a place to stop.
The
difficulty is that this view is based on modern man's knowledge of South Asian
geography. Many of us see a relief map of South Asia nearly every day. At the
start of our history courses we give a survey of South Asian geography, point
out the mountains, and demonstrate the geographical unity of the area. But it
is questionable that a Mughal emperor had, in this concrete geographical sense,
any such conception. We do know that geography was not an important part of the
education likely to have been received by a Mughal prince. Further, maps and
globes were rarities at court in the seventeenth century: Europeans found them
to be esteemed gifts.5 At the least, we need to be careful not to transfer our
knowledge of South Asian geography to the minds of Mughal emperors.
There
is, of course, another aspect to this problem. In the Hindu tradition is the
con cept of the chakravartin, the universal ruler. It is unclear what sort of
area a chakravartin should fitly rule: it may or may not be coterminous with
South Asia. Nor is there any proof that the Muslim emperors had acquired any such
perceptual baggage from their Hindu predecessors. The matter is open, but I
suspect they thought primarily in terms of Hindustan, and saw the northwest as
the logical place for expansion.
It is clear that the circles and spirals are at least implicitly seen as symptoms or consequences, not as causes of the decline, for the circle spins off from the move south. The proximate cause of the decline is thus claimed to be this move south. Our aim in this paper is to show that the move south was itself a symptom of a central weakness in the Mughal empire. Because of the centrality of military concerns in the upper levels of the state, there was no alternative but to respond aggressively to a military challenge. The move south was thus a final desperate attempt to crush a formidable enemy that had already inflicted humiliating defeats on the empire. The move was not expansionist, it was entirely defensive, a product of desperation, not of free Mughal choice.
Once
in the south, the Mughals of course failed to defeat decisively the Marathas.
The strains of protracted war produced, late in the century, obvious signs of
decline: a growing imbalance between the number of jagirdars and the resources
made available to pay them; peasant revolts in different areas; a disheartened
and increasingly disloyal nobility. But these were all caused by the move
south, and the subsequent military failure. The real question is thus: Why the
move south? The answers lie in the composition of the Mughal nobility, the
nature of their ties to the empire, and the impact on them of Maratha successes
up to 1666. In what follows we make two assumptions about the nature of the
Mughal state and its nobility; it is necessary to spell these out clearly.
The
Mughal State and Nobility
First,
we see Mughal rule as very indirect. The subjects of the state should be
visualized as constituents of one or more groups based on kin, caste,
occupation, locality, religion, or some other determinant. Each group had a
head of some sort—a seth (merchant head), apir (Muslim saint), a zamindar, a
street chief, a village headman or council—who was the intermediary with the
Mughal administration on the rare occasions when the group or a member of it
needed to be connected to this administration. But most of the time, most of
the subjects of a Mughal emperor handled their own affairs for themselves,
within their own group or groups, and had nothing to do with any official.
The
maximum core of the empire, the only people directly connected to the ruler—
and the only people concerned with his fate—were a small number of men bound to
him by patron-client ties. These men can be mechanically defined as those
holding any mansab (rank) bestowed by the emperor. They numbered at most 8,000
men in an em pire of sixty or seventy million people. Radiating out from these
people were many others, connected to these mansabdars (rank-holders) by their
own patron-client ties: the soldiers, the artists, the household officials of
the mansabdars—all bound only indirectly, through their patrons, to the empire.
The 8,000 men were the empire, the only people linked to the emperor by direct
patronage ties, the only people in whom it was possible that the concept of the
Mughal Empire outweighed other primordial attachments, the people who were Mughal
India's "core of more fully integrated members" providing it with a
"level of integration or solidarity and a distinctive membership
status."6
In
fact, this figure of 8,000 is very much a maximum number for those bound
directly to the empire, for it includes all those holding any rank at all.
Athar Ali includes in his category of "noble" only those mansabdars
with ranks of 1,000 or more; until late in the seventeenth century these people
numbered less than 500 men. This limit of a rank of 1,000 is rather arbitrary,
for men with a rank of only 500 could hold responsible positions. Given our
lack of knowledge of the lower-ranked mansabdars, it is perhaps best to say
simply and arbitrarily that the core nobility of Mughal India numbered about
1,000 men.
Our
second basic claim is that this small group of 1,000 nobles was connected to
the emperor only by patronage, and the continuance of this patronage depended
on military success. Neither religion nor racial origin provided any reason for
loyalty: in the period 1658-78, of Aurangzib's top mansabdars (those with
mansabs of 5,000 or more), 49 per cent were Hindu or born outside India, while
an astounding 82 per cent were Hindu or of foreign extraction.7 Even within
such categories as "foreign-born," the heterogeneity could be great.
At the end of Shah Jahan's reign (reigned 1628-58), his foreign-born nobles
came not just from Persia or Central Asia but from seventeen different places.8
There was thus no ethnically based solidarity amongst the nobility vis-a-vis
the emperor, nor between the emperor and his nobles. Nor did any sort of
abstract loyalty to Aurangzib as ruler of an impersonal ongoing state exist.
Finally,
Muslim law was always suspicious of temporal rulers. An association with courts
and rulers was, at least in theory, considered to preclude the possibility of
leading a good Muslim life.9 The practical effect of this was probably limited,
but it did restrict active support of the state from at least some religious
groups. The nobles followed the emperor as a person and nothing more, as a man
who at least temporarily was ruler and who—through the fruits of military
success—was able to dispense patronage.
The
importance of military matters is demonstrated by some interesting evidence
from Shah Jahan's reign. A. Jan Qaisar presents figures to show that in 1647,
77.2 per cent of the total salary claim of Shah Jahan's top 445 nobles was from
their sawar (military) rank, and so—at least in theory—was spent on military
matters. Perhaps even more indicative is Qaisar's claim that 47.5 per cent of
the total jama (standard land reve nue assessment) of the empire was allocated
to the sawar salaries of these top 445 nobles. Qaisar is rightly cautious of
this data, but even if they do exaggerate reality they still il lustrate an
enormous stress on military activities, and a large allocation of available
resources to this area.10
The
primacy of the military ethic found ample expression in the sayings and doings
of the emperors and their nobles. Thus Akbar (1556-1605) said that a
"monarch should be ever intent on conquest." Aurangzib allegedly told
his deposed father that "although the greatest conquerors are not always
the greatest Kings," "I am indeed far from de nying that conquests ought
to distinguish the reign of a great Monarch, and that I should
disgrace
the blood of the great Timur, our honoured progenitor, if I did not seek to
extend the bounds of my present territories."11 Acting on the latter
belief, he attempted to bolster the shaky legitimacy of his early reign by a
period of furious military activity. In this, he was simply following
established Mughal practice: as has recently been noted, the Mughal empire
"was created by conquest and attuned to constant military
activity."12 Similarly, P. Hardy says that "at no time did Muslim
rulers [in medieval India] preside over a demilitarised society."13
The
nobles were thus bound to a person, and this person had to be a winner. As to
the first point, it was demonstrated by the requirement that all nobles at court
attend on the emperor twice daily. The converse of this requirement was that
the nobles could thus constantly check that the emperor was indeed still alive
and well. Shah Jahan's deposition was the ultimate proof that a Mughal emperor
had to be functioning and active; even a suspicion of his death or incapacity
led to a breaking of loyalty. This lesson Aurangzib learnt: even when
critically ill, he would drag himself out once a day so all could see the
empire still existed.
Not
just a personal appearance but an aura of success was needed; and this martial
mandate of heaven could be extremely cruel. In 1658 Aurangzib and his brother
Murad Bakhsh, temporary allies in the war of succession to the ailing Shah
Jahan, defeated Dara Shukoh. For the nobles, this was enough: their decision
was clear. With only two exceptions, they deserted Dara Shukoh and his father
Shah Jahan, and rallied unhesitatingly to Aurangzib. "The high grandees
and other imperial officers came in troops to the Court of Aurangzib in hope
[of his patronage] and each received favours suited to his rank." A year
later, at Aurangzib's formal coronation, and with Shah Jahan still alive,
indeed destined to live seven more years, "The courtiers bowed to do
honour, and sang the praises of and prayed for the Emperor."14 The bulk of
Delhi's population may have supported Dara Shukoh, but as Bernier noted,
"It is certain that the close con finement of Chah-Jehan [in June 1658]
seemed the signal for nearly the whole body of Omrahs to pay their court to
Aurang-Zebe and Morad Bakche. I can indeed scarcely repress my indignation when
I reflect that there was not a single movement nor even a voice heard in behalf
of the aged and injured Monarch: although the Omrahs who bowed the knee to his
oppressors were indebted to him for their rank and riches."15
This
martial orientation dictated that nearly all nobles, regardless of their
talents, had sawar (military), as well as zat (personal), ranks. A noble's
position could be based on artistic ability, scholarship, or on his ability to
entertain the emperor; but no matter— they still had military ranks. Bernier's
patron, Danishmand Khan, was primarily a scholar and diplomat: indeed, his
scholarship and achievements were so highly valued by Aurangzib that he was exempted
from twice daily attendance at court, the better for him to be able to pursue
his studies. Yet he was also a commander of 2,500 troops.16 Frequently such
non-martial nobles were required to live up to the implications of their
military ranks; Abul Fazl and Raja Birbal both died on military expeditions.
Nor apparently did the nobles object to this, for advancement and control of
greater resources usually came from military success. More than routine
promotion came most often after victories.
Given
these two attributes of the Mughal system, an important corollary follows: in
such a system only the mansabdars were loyal to the empire, for only they were
part of it. The dependents of a mansabdar, his family, employees, and troops,
were perhaps loyal at one remove, through the mediation of the mansabdar; but
for all other subjects of the empire, loyalty went to the social group to which
they belonged, not to the empire.or the emperor. This in turn meant that the
only way a man could be made loyal to the emperor was by making him a
mansabdar. Thus, the emperor could not negotiate with a rebel; the choice was
to bond him to the emperor by incorporation in the nobility, or to crush him.
With this background, we can now consider the nature and impact of the defeats
suffered by this small, militarily oriented group of nobles.
The
Maratha Revolt
Our
main interest is in the effects of the revolt of the Marathas, not in the
causes of their revolt nor in the reasons for their early successes, for both
of these are obvious enough. There were always zamindars ready to revolt in
India, as Dr. Naqvi's tabulation of 144 revolts against Akbar shows.17 Most
often they first reduced the amount of revenue they handed over to imperial
authorities. If the latter retaliated in strength, the zamindar acquiesced,
knowing that he had misread the situation. If no punishment was forthcoming,
the zamindar used his extra money to acquire men and then territory, continuing
to do this until the imperial power was awakened and responded. As Abul Fazl
noted, "The custom of the majority of the zamindars of Hindustan is to
leave the path of single-mindedness and to look to every side and to join
anyone who is powerful or who is making an increasing stir."18 More
specifically, in 1663-4, a ma n claiming to be Aurangzib's late elder brother,
Dara Shukoh, appeared in Gujarat. "The Kolis, who always have the wind of
revolt and passion of rebellion in their heads, made that base person a handle
of revolt, and created disorder."19 Similarly, Shah Jahan, in revolt
against his father, reached Bengal in 1624, and "The suppressed unruly
elements once more raised their heads."20
The
Maratha success became self-sustaining after the mid-i66os, and went on and on
in a self-generating fashion. The initial successes were a result of several
well-known factors: the terrain of the Maratha swaraj (homeland), so difficult
for a cumbersome Bijapuri or Mughal army; Shivaji's tactical expertise,
especially the use of light fast horses and the strong yet inexpensive hill
forts; the existence of happy hunting grounds in the weakened sultanate of
Bijapur; Aurangzib's involvement in the war of succession just when it seemed
that he could and would turn on Shivaji and nip him in the bud.
With
this fortuitous start, Shivaji was able to build on strength. By his death in
1680, he was very much more than just another rebel. He controlled an area of
about 50,000 square miles, or 4.1 per cent of the area of the whole
subcontinent.21 His revenue was between one-fifth and one-sixth of that of
Aurangzib.22 In his territory he had set up a comparatively elaborate
administrative apparatus.23 None of the other contemporary rebels—the Satnamis,
the Sikhs, the Yusufzais, the Jats, the Afridis—achieved anything remotely
comparable to this. Indeed, Shivaji had moved beyond being a rebel to a
position as head of a rival state. The effect of Shivaji's successes is more
difficult to define, but our basic contention is that by 1666 he had had such
success that the Mughals had no alternative but to respond massively by a move
south to Shivaji's homeland. The decline followed from this. Thus it is as
early as 1666 that we can find the entrance to the circle, the beginning of the
decline.
Until
he called himself away for the war of succession, Aurangzib had apparently
planned to crush Bijapur and then deal with Shivaji. But the Marathas remained
in the forefront of his mind, for one of his first acts after he had defeated
his brothers was, in July 1659, t 0 send Shaista Khan south as viceroy of the
Deccan, his main task being to oppose Shivaji. Shaista Khan was no mere troop
commander. He ranked third in the noble hierarchy; bearing the prestigious
title of Amir-ul-umara, he was a son of the great Asaf Khan, and the maternal
uncle of Aurangzib. Typically, Shaista Khan did little. He remained in camp in
and around Poona for more than two and a half years, until Shivaji carried out
an audacious attack in April 1663. Shaista Khan lost a son, a thumb, several
attendants, and much prestige. The attack on such an eminent and well-connected
noble caused consternation at court, and dismay for Aurangzib. Shaista Khan was
sent off in disgrace to the penal province of Bengal without even being allowed
the usual interview with Aurangzib.
The
Sack of Surat
Shivaji's
second, and most astounding, exploit was his first seizure and sack of Surat in
January 1664. The importance of this raid has not been generally appreciated.
During the whole of the seventeenth century, Surat was far and away the
greatest port of Mughal India, or in Tavernier's words "the sole port of
the whole empire of the Great Mogul. "24 In 1644, the value of goods
passing through the customs house was around Rs. 1,00,00,000. By comparison,
the total capital available on 165 ships sent to the east by the English East
India Company between 1601 and 1640 amounted to about Rs. 3,00,00,000. In
1646-47, the standard assessment of the land revenue of the fertile province of
Gujarat was Rs. 1,32,50,000; with a rate of one-third, we can value
agricultural production in all Gujarat at about Rs. 4,oo,oo,ooo.25 Clearly,
Surat and its trade were of considerable economic importance in Gujarat, and
also in the whole empire.
Politically,
and militarily, the seizure of Surat was a bombshell. The new viceroy the Deccan,
Prince Muazzam, sat in Aurangabad with a large army and did nothing to prevent
the raid or to intercept Shivaji as he moved back to the Deccan. In the town
itself, the officials fled to the impregnable castle and undertook no offensive
action at all, although they commanded a force of over 20,000 men26 and Shivaji
had only 10,000.27 In fact, the Mughals performed ingloriously. Yet the true
political impact of this raid can be appreciated only when it is considered
that Shivaji was the first rebel ever to capture and plunder an important
Mughal town and not be punished immediately. His action was unprecedented, both
in scope and success. The only parallel seems to have been an occurrence in
1610, when a man claiming to be the Mughal prince Khusrau was, by luck, able to
seize Patna and hold it for one week; he then was attacked and killed.28
For
a pious emperor, Surat had more than economic and political importance; it was
the port from which the hajj (pilgrimage) ships left Mughal India for the Red
Sea. The port was variously known as the Bab-al-Makkah, the Bab-ul-Hajj, the
Dar-ul-Hajj, and the Bandar-i Mubarak. Aurangzib himself sent two large ships
to the Red Sea each year from Surat, carrying pilgrims free of charge. The
principal persons of his harem and his nobles joined him in sending
considerable contributions via Surat to Mecca. More quantitatively, the
importance of the hajj, of Mecca, and thus of Surat as the gate way to the Red
Sea is revealed by the gifts Aurangzib sent after his coronation. In 1662, the
Shah of Persia sent Aurangzib presents worth Rs. 422,000, and Aurangzib reciprocated
with Rs. 535,000; but to the sharifs of Mecca and Medina, in 1659 n e sen t
articles worth Rs. 630,000.29 The sacking of the "blessed.port" was a
more-than-routine affront to Aurangzib, and was aggravated by Shivaji's navy,
from the early 1660s, beginning a regular program of plundering Aurangzibs
pilgrim ships.30
The
first sack of Surat thus had an enormous impact on Mughal prestige, an impact
of much greater significance than the more-than-a-crore (10,000,000) of rupees
Shivaji took away in plunder. The memory lingered on, unsettling to the
inhabitants of Surat and derogatory to the prestige of the empire. Even in
1695, a European traveller found recollections of this raid still alive in
Surat.31 The remembrance was encouraged by Shivaji, who—in 1664 and
later—audaciously demanded annual chautb (protection money) from the town, on
pain of a return visit. Surat was subject to almost annual panics, as rumors
spread of Shivaji's return. An assumption of inevitable Mughal victory had in a
few years swung completely around to an assumption of inevitable Maratha
victory, and this in the most important and prestigious port of the empire.
The
rich merchants fled to the castle or left town each time these rumours spread;
in this, they were wise. The Mughals had responded to Shivaji's first raid,
but, despite their concern, not very effectively. Immediately after the raid,
the governor of Gujarat came to the town with a considerable force and stayed
three months. Aurangzib sacked the delinquent officials, and the town was
walled; but to no avail. The defense opposed to Shivaji's second raid, in
October 1670, was even more feeble than that to the first; and by 1677, things
had reached such a pass that Maratha leaders would nonchalantly walk into the
town accompanied only by a handful of troopers, and insolently demand food and
money from the governor.32
Mughal
Response
These
two coups, the attack on Shaista Khan and the first raid on Surat, left
Aurangzib with no choice but to respond massively. As Manucci said, "He
could no longer endure the insults of Shiva Ji."33 In 1665, Jai Singh, the
top general and top noble in the empire, was sent south with a large and
well-supported army and full diplomatic powers. The result was an impressive
victory: Shivaji was defeated, and signed a treaty with Jai Singh in June 1665.
By this treaty of Purandar, Shivaji was forced to cede twenty-three of his
thirty-five forts and 80 per cent of his revenue from forts. Yet this was only
a partial victory: Shivaji kept some of his forts, and the Mughals made other
concessions. Shivaji's son was given a high mansab; Shivaji himself was invited
to join in the spoilation of Bijapur, and he was not at this time compelled to
come to court and pay homage to Aurangzib. It was clearly far from complete
eradication, yet such as it was it was greeted with slightly hysterical joy at
court. Jai Singh and his family and retainers were lavishly rewarded.
What
went wrong at court in 1666? For the Mughals, the prognosis must have ap peared
good. Shivaji had, after all, been defeated by Jai Singh, and since then had
achieved little fighting with the Mughals against Bijapur. In May 1666, his
fortunes were at a low ebb; the time seemed ripe to pursue Akbar's Rajput
policy: to beat enemies and then buy them. This was indeed the crucial moment,
for this was the time when perhaps Shivaji could be incorporated in the
mansabdari system and thus bonded to the empire.
Several
factors dictated failure. Unlike the Rajputs, Shivaji was something of a
barbarian in the refined atmosphere of the Mughal court; his unruly conduct may
have stemmed from a reflex action designed to cover his embarassment at his
lack of ability to fit in with Mughal courtly etiquette. More important, he was
not completely beaten; and he knew it. Had Aurangzib offered a really large
bribe, perhaps a very high mansab com bined with some freedom of action for
Shivaji in the Deccan, an accommodation might have been reached. But Aurangzib
did not offer this; he could not. Neither he nor his nobles were prepared to
offer Shivaji a position he could accept. How, for example, would the top
Rajputs or the courtly Persians feel if a low-caste brigand, a "mountain
rat," was raised above them? Aurangzib knew this, and presumably also knew
that too lavish rewards to a successful brigand would set a most dangerous
precedent. But it is unlikely that Aurangzib personally was disposed to treat
Shivaji too gently. Even by receiving him at court and giving him a robe of
honor, he was going further than he wanted to and also further than certain
influential people around him thought he should go.
These
people—opposed to Shivaji for diverse reasons—included Jafar Khan; Ra'd Khan;
Jaswant Singh, who was simply jealous of Jai Singh; and several of the women of
his harem. Two influential women had particular grievances: The wife of the
wazir, Jafar Khan, was a sister of Shaista Khan. Jahanara, Aurangzib's favorite
sister, had been receiving the customs duties from Surat; and Shivaji's raid
was thus a direct affront to her. All these people opposed Aurangzib's
half-hearted attempt to befriend the attacker of Shaista Khan and the plunderer
of the Gate of the Hajj. They were able to play on Aurangzib's latent hostility
and get Shivaji imprisoned while they continued to debate his fate. Even by
1666, Shivaji had been too successful, had made too much of an impact on the
very highest levels of the Mughal court, for Aurangzib to be able to buy him.34
Shivaji's
escape in August was thus merely the final straw. It completely nullified Jai
Singh's victory of the previous year, and further decreased the prestige of an
emperor who apparently could neither win over nor kill a rebel at his court. It
also bore out again how feared Shivaji had by this time become. The English at
Surat knew of the escape within a month, and anxiously noted that the
"feares of the countryes hereabouts begin againe to be great." Two
months later they reported that "now all waite some cruell revenge upon
the country and people. Wee were lately hotly allarum'd upon a reporte that he
was come neere with a flyeing army, that all the people began to flye again:
but the report proved fake. Yet, let him come when he will, the whole towne
will be dispeopled: for none will face him or abide the place."35 Modern
authors agree on the decisiveness of the failure at reconciliation and the
later flight,36 as indeed did Aurangzib both at the time37 and later. His will
included these retrospective reflections on the events of 1666:
"Negligence for a single moment becomes the cause of disgrace for long
years. The escape of the wretch Shiva took place through carelessness, and I
have to labour hard [against the Marathas] to the end of my life [as the result
of it]."38
Analysis
of the Mughal Response
Where
exactly lay the damage from these three feats, and other less spectacular
Maratha raids in the Deccan? Certainly there was almost no threat to the
immediate economic interests of the nobility, or to the heartland of the
empire. Hindustan was not visited by Maratha bands until the eighteenth
century. Plunder in Malwa was of little concern to the home base of the state.
Nor were most nobles affected directly in any economic sense, except for a few
minor officials in Surat. Shaista Khan went on to a long and personally
profitable stay as governor of Bengal; and there is no sign thatjahanara was
ever short of funds. Surat survived the raids, and remained India's greatest
port into the eighteenth century.
Today
we know that the empire probably could have moved inward to Hindustan, remaining
there secure and inviolate. But for the Mughal nobility, the sociology of their
knowledge of Shivaji's activities to 1666 dictated a very different response.
In Robert Berkhofer's stimulating terms, the problem for Aurangzib—and for the
empire—was that "Behaviour is not a direct reaction to the stimuli, but a
response made in accordance with ideational mediation."39 Given the open
challenge, and the orientation of the nobility, there was no alternative to a
military response; and this meant a move to the south.
One
crucial element here was who had initiated the combat. Defeat was not new to
the Mughals, but previously it had been defeat in a war started by them, and in
peripheral areas of slight concern to them. In two centuries, Qandahar was besieged
fifteen times and transferred twelve times; but the "real significance of
Qandahar was as a testing point, a limited arena, where each side [the Mughals
and Safavid Persia] could probe the strength of the other."40 Qandahar
could be lost, unsuccessfully besieged, regained or whatever; success and
failure here were relatively unimportant economically, politically, and in
terms of prestige. Similarly, the Mughals could operate with rather modest
success in the northern Deccan for sixty years, and not suffer deleterious
consequences. But Maratha raids on Surat, and into Khandesh and Malwa,
objectively also unimportant, had far more serious consequences, for they
demanded retaliation.
The
many challenges to Akbar had no long-term effects, for, as Dr. Naqvi documents,
they were all crushed quickly; if anything, they helped him to build up an aura
of invincibility. In Aurangzib's move south, doubtless the usual motive for the
expansion of an empire was present, the need for ever more resources to
maintain the allegiance of the nobles. This, however, was not an imperative, at
least not for a move south, for expansion could have gone elsewhere. Nor was
Aurangzib's religious opposition to the heterodox rulers of Bijapur and
Golconda an imperative. Expansion on either of these grounds implies at least
an element of free choice. But Shivaji's success ended the freedom; thanks to
him, the involvement was unavoidable.
By
1666 Shivaji had humiliated the Mughals three times. Sarkar sums up the
significance of this: "A hundred victories since the second Panipat had
taught the Indian world to believe that Mughal arms were invincible and Mughal
territory inviolable. Shivaji broke the spell."41 Aurangzib acquired the
pall of a loser. The empire had been challenged, and had to strike back
decisively. Given the obvious tensions for a Hindu noble serving an orthodox
Muslim emperor, and for a Shia Persian serving a strict Sunni emperor both
religiously and politically at loggerheads with Persia, the fact be comes
clear. With no bond for the empire except precarious military success, the
whole military ethic, the image of a noble as fitly engaged when he galloped
over the plain lead ing his troops, dictated that this small group were forced
south. The ideational media tion of Aurangzib and his nobles left them with no
alternative.
The
Maratha Impact
How
can we demonstrate more clearly the fatal impact of Shivaji's early successes
and of the crucial failure to bond him in 1666? We should first perhaps show
that most— or at least many—nobles were acutely aware of Shivaji and his
challenge, for Sarkar stresses the unimportance of the Deccan and the Maratha
revolt until Aurangzib himself moved south in 1681.42 Using Athar Ali's list of
the top nobility for 1658-78, and adding one—Abul Muhammad, whom he seems to
have missed—we have counted the number of the top nobles of this period who had
extensive contact with Shivaji. For this purpose we have included all those
engaged in military operations against Shivaji, all those who took central
roles in the discussions at court in 1666, and all Maratha and Deccani
additions to the Mughal nobility. The results are startling. Even though our
figures for those involved with Shivaji are certainly low, at Shivaji's death
in 1680, thirty-one out of the top fifty, and fifty-seven out of the top one
hundred, had been directly involved with him. Even more important, the figures
as of Shivaji's flight from Agra in 1666 are nineteen out of fifty, and
thirty-two out of one hundred. As early as 1666, about 35 per cent of the top
nobility had been closely involved with the problem of the Marathas. He and his
successes were very much alive in the minds of the nobility by 1666. Less
quantitative evidence also demonstrates how widely known and feared Shivaji had
become during the 1660s. Bernier, who left India in 1667, wrote that Shivaji
"is exercising all the powers of an independent sovereign; laughs at the
threats both of the Mogol and of the King of Visapour. . . . He distracts the
attention of Aurang-Zebe by his bold and never-ceasing enterprises. . . . How
to put down Seva-Gi is become the object of chief importance."43 Aurangzib
clearly agreed with this opinion, not just in 1682 when he moved south himself,
but much earlier. "A significant statement is made in a newsletter of his
Court in 1670 that the Emperor read a despatch from the Deccan, re counting
some raids of Shiva, and then 'remained silent'. In the inner council of the
Court he often anxiously asked whom he should next send against Shivaji, seeing
that nearly all his great generals had failed in the Deccan." As early as
1666, he was taunted by his great rival, Shah Abbas n of Persia: "You call
yourself a Padishah, but cannot subdue a mere zamindar like Shiva. I am going
to India with an army to teach you your business."44 Conversely, those
nobles who did succeed against the Marathas were lavishly rewarded, such as Jai
Singh and his associates in 1665, or Khanjahan Bahadur in 1675.45 Even the
officially sanctioned abuse of Shivaji as the "wild animal," the
"mountain rat," the "knave," is indicative more of fear
than of confidence. The courtly chronogram for the date of Shivaji's death was
a pungent "The infidel went to hell." Two other groups of figures,
those for immigration to India and those for revenue collections, bear out the
impact of Shivaji's early successes. There is no doubt that Mughal India's
neighbors kept a close eye on what was happening in the empire. Embassies,
which doubled as information gatherers, were numerous: no less than seven in
the early 1660s—from places as diverse as Ethiopia, Mecca, and the Uzbegs. Shah
Abbas 11 of Persia taunted Aurangzib with his losses to Shivaji as early as
1666.46 Given this foreign knowledge of events in Mughal India, we would expect
the conspicuous losses suffered by Aurangzib to lead to a less rosy view of
India as a place to which to emigrate. Such is indeed the case. All the
indicators bear this out when we follow Athar Ali's comparisons of 1658-78 and
1679-1707. The percentage of nobles born outside India fell from 11.3 per cent
to 8 per cent. Iranis and Turanis among the nobility fell from 41.3 per cent to
34.4 per cent. Iranis alone fell from 28 per cent to 22 per cent.47 Two
standard explanations for this decline need to be considered. Athar Ali claims
that the Uzbeg and Safavid empires weakened late in the seventeenth century;
and this explains the drop in emigration.48 But surely a declining native
empire would foster emigration if a more attractive empire were available.
Second, Aurangzib's religious policies are sometimes blamed for the drop in
Shia Persian immigration. This also is unconvincing. Aurangzib was always ready
to use capable Shias; indeed, Sarkar considers him to have been especially
eager to have Persians and Turks enter his service.49 Furthermore, Athar Ali
finds" Aurangzib using Persians at the highest levels, as governors, much
more often than did Shah Jahan.50 In any case, not just the Persian percentage
but the percentage of all born outside India fell in the latter period. The
true explanation has to be that Mughal India was no longer seen as the El
Dorado it once had been. Even foreigners suspected its star was waning, and
voted with their feet, by not moving them in that direction.
Mughal
revenue statistics are notoriously unreliable, and the only runs we have are
for the jama, or standard assessment; actual collections frequently had little
relation to the sums done in the offices of remote Delhi or Agra. With the Ain
taken as a base, Habib finds the jama of the empire (excluding the Deccan, so
that the area is roughly constant) going as follows:
1595
100
1633-38
142
1646-47
162
c.
1656 168
1667
145
1687-1709
16951
In
Bengal, Chatterjee's figures seem to show a small fall in the jama of Bengal in
1667 as compared with 1658, and a large fall in the amount sent to the center
from the province: Rs.87,00,000 in 1658, Rs.55,00,000 in 1665.62 These large
falls in the mid 1660s are enormously suggestive. I at least suspect that they
derived from zamindars taking advantage of the apparent weakness of the empire
in the face of Shivaji. The traditional action of zamindars in such
circumstances was to keep back some extra revenue and wait to see how weak the
empire really was.
The
Response of the Nobles
Finally,
the serious impact of Shivaji's successes seems to be reflected in the actions
of the Mughal nobility. Some of them had apparently lost heart during the
1660s; this was revealed when war resumed in the 1670s. Again we are in
difficult terrain, for we are trying to describe how a Mughal noble thought; in
the absence of contemporary diaries and letters, such an undertaking must be
hazardous, the results only tentative. Before Shivaji ever appeared, it was
notorious that the Mughal nobility did not always fight as hard as they could.
They had very practical reasons for not winning too quickly. Power in India
consisted of control over resources, most notably land and people. For a noble,
power was maximized when he was campaigning for his troops, and so the number
of people he controlled expanded as also did the amount of land used to pay
these extra people. In a noncritical situation, it was thus best to appear to
be laboring heroically against a formidable enemy, with victory always just
around the corner but never quite definitively attained. Shaista Khan put it
best. When urged to attack Shivaji directly, "the shrewd noble replied
that if the Deccan campaign was so quickly concluded, an attack on Qandahar
would be ordered, and if that too succeeded the contingents would be disbanded."53
On
this point, the distinction made earlier about who started the war is
important, as also is the progress of the particular war. Thus for Mughal
nobles to jog easily along, procrastinate, take bribes from the enemy and
generally display less than total martial valor was understandable when they
were engaged against a non-essential outpost such as Qandahar. Similarly, to
hasten slowly against the Deccanis of Ahmadnagar in the first third of the
seventeenth century was simply to preserve one's own interests. But the last
time this could be done against Shivaji was up to 1663. Shaista Khan, sitting
at ease in Poona for thirty-two months, was simply following the old standard;
it is clear that he never expected to have any difficulty in crushing Shivaji
if Aurangzib forced him to do so, or if he wanted to himself. It appeared to be
in his interests not to do so.
The
situation was reversed by Shivaji's attack on this same Shaista Khan, and by
the plunder of Surat only nine months later. Now the Mughals were being
challenged. Until now they had always responded decisively to such a challenge:
Akbar's second conquest of Gujarat in 1573; his defeat of the rebellions of
1580-81; the crushing of the mock Khusrau in 1610; the effective responses when
Malik Ambar came too far out of Ahmadnagar; and a host of other Mughal
victories. Jai Singh's victory in 1665 was in this same line of descent; again
the Mughals were showing that they could deal quickly and decisively with any
challenge. The problem was that the victory and the treaty were nullified very
promptly by Shivaji's escape from Agra. This situation was quite new for the
nobles; and when active war resumed in 1670 (significantly, again initiated by
Shivaji, not by the Mughals), some responded by less than valorous activities.
Clearly,
some nobles were not so much despairing as victims of mixed motives. After all,
it was not their empire that was failing; it was Aurangzib's. So why worry if
Shivaji rampaged? Those opposing him were rewarded by large contingents, and
thus greater power. Nevertheless, some nobles apparently were not being
expedient; they had simply given up. In the twenty-three years from 1658,
Shivaji was subjected to intensive opposition for only eight years. There are
recurrent reports of nobles taking bribes, reaching accommodations, and
displaying simple cowardice in the face of Maratha attacks.54 The dispiritment
of many nobles was perhaps most clearly revealed a little,
later,
in the mid-i68os, in the sieges of Bijapur and Golconda. Aurangzib, two
princes, and a huge Mughal army besieged Bijapur city for eighteen months. At
the end of the siege the garrison numbered only 2,000 men, yet finally the city
was not taken; it surrendered at discretion. The Mughals then moved on to
Golconda, and after an inglorious siege of seven months managed to take the
fort by treachery.55 Athar Ali finds these lackadaisical noble performances
"peculiar,"66 but indeed they were not. Given Shivaji's unprecedented
successes, they were only to be expected.
Finally,
when was the last chance for salvation lost? By the mid 1660s, two chances to
end Shivaji's threat had been missed. In 1657, it looked likely that Aurangzib,
then vice roy of the Deccan, would soon crush Bijapur and then turn on
Bijapur's revolted vassal. He was distracted; ironically his victory in the war
of succession was pyrrhic, for it was predicated on giving Shivaji the
opportunity—which he ably seized—to expand dramatically. Thus one chance had
been lost through, ultimately, the Mughal failure to evolve a systematic method
of succession to the throne. It is true that the Mughal wars of succession were
routinized, the battles often mock battles, and the nobility free to support
their princely patrons—secure in the knowledge that a bad guess would not be
held against them by the ultimate victor. Nevertheless, these wars did have
serious consequences elsewhere. The mice on the borders played while the cat
was away in 1600-05 and 1627-28, but most notably and fatally in 1657-58.
The
second and last chance came and was lost in 1666 in Agra. It was clear that
Shivaji was, in 1666, as humiliated and down as he was ever to be. He was open
to an offer, provided it was a very generous one. We have already argued that
Aurangzib by this time was unable, for both personal and political reasons, to
offer a bribe high enough to buy off Shivaji. Thus, the only way Aurangzib
could have succeeded was to kill Shivaji, or at the least imprison him. This
would probably have been effective; the Maratha challenge at this time, though
demonstrably not later, could have been crushed if it were first beheaded. But
this chance also was lost when Shivaji escaped.
Why
did Shivaji survive? Possibly Aurangzib intended to kill him, but first felt it
necessary to win complete support for this move from his nobles—especially Jai
Singh, who had guaranteed Shivaji's safety. But it is more likely that
Aurangzib was genuinely at a loss about what to do. The Mughals, at least at
this time, had no tradition of murdering people who were loosely or potentially
members of the nobility.57 Rebels against the empire were despatched with
alacrity, often with barbarity, such as two of the Sikh gurus (Arjun in 1606,
Tegh Bahdur in 1675), and a host of others. But as of 1666, Shivaji was not an
active rebel. Aurangzib had made a treaty with him, his son was a mansabdar,
and Shivaji himself was still potentially open to cooptation. Mughal emperors
did not kill people in this position.
What
little hope there was of winning Shivaji over disappeared when he escaped. The
Mughals, disheartened by the escape of their arch-enemy and distracted by other
revolts, were glad to let Shivaji lie quiet until 1670. No doubt they hoped his
narrow es cape had so impressed him that he would subside. But Shivaji did not.
The attacks of the 1670s revealed how well he had used his respite. Aurangzib
and his nobility were forced to respond. The disastrous consequences of his
escape, and of the impact of his attacks on Shaista Khan and Surat, were thus
revealed; and the true "Tragedy of Aurangzebe" (pace Dryden), tragic
because inevitable, began to be played out in the Deccan.
In
conclusion, it is worthwhile to stress that the defeats dictated such a
response only because of the nature of the tie between emperor and noble. The
military orientation of the tie, and the consequent need for victory to produce
more pickings, meant that such an empire had to respond to every military
challenge. To avoid decline, it had to achieve the improbable feat of never
being humiliated militarily. Thus at a more abstract—and perhaps
tautological—level, the empire declined because it failed to evolve to a more
impersonal level, where criteria other than personal military ones could be
allowed to have more influence.58 Had such an evolution occurred, it is at least
arguable that the empire would have been able to cut its losses in the
mid-i66os or a little later and retire to Hindustan. But the empire, because of
its fundamental character,' could react to a military challenge only by a
military response.
Notes
M. N. Pearson is a lecturer in History at the Aurangzeb (Bombay, 1966) as Mughal Nobility; University of New South Wales. This is a revised Jadunath Sarkar, Shivaji and his Times (Calcutta, version of a paper first presented to the 1973 Annual 1961, 6th ed.) as Shivaji; Jadunath Sarkar, A Short Meeting of the American Historical Association. History of Aurangzib, 1618-1707 (Calcutta, 1962,
1 Irfan Habib, The Agrarian System of Mughal 3rd ed.) as Aurangzib.
India (Bombay, 1963), pp. • 317-51. The following
2 Mughal Nobility, pp. 9, 11, 89-94, 171-4. frequently cited works will be abbreviated as fol-
3 Most recently Percival Spear, A History of In lows: M. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under dia, vol. II (Baltimore, 1965), p. 60.
4 Percival Spear, India, Pakistan, and the West Culture during the Mughal Age (1)26-1707) (Agra, (London, 1967, 4th ed.), p. 19. 1963, 2nd ed.), pp. 158-9. ' Pran Nath Chopra, Some Aspects of Society and 5 1
6 Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and description of the powers of Muslim rulers, espe Comparative Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., daily the Ottoman Turks (III, pp. 26, 99-133), 1966), p. 17, referring to any society. Figures: Mug- greatly exaggerates the real influence of these rulers. hal Nobility, pp. 7-9. There is a growing body of To my mind, the analysis by H. A. R. Gibb and literature on the characteristics of Islamic states. Harold Bowen in Islamic Society and the West Marshall G. S. Hodgson in his recent monumental (London, 1950-57, 2 vols) gives a much better The Venture of Islam (Chicago, 1975, 3 vols) is impression, for it stresses the importance of local ties typically provocative and acute; see, for example, I, and norms rather than state control in governing the pp. 241-7, 280-84, 292-4, 320-22; II, pp. 62-151, lives of most people most of the time; see I, i, pp. 404; III, pp. 3-5, 25-27. Nevertheless, I feel that his 158-60, 208-16, 276-81.
7 Mughal Nobility, pp. 33-35