The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c14.54

v4.c14.54

Among the graver difficulties overcome by Sher Shāh was that offered by the character of his own people, proud, turbulent, disobedient and vindictive, ever ready to prefer family and tribal to national interests. Buhlūl Lodī had been content with the position of leader of a confederacy of tribal chiefs, *primus inter pares*, but Sher Shāh perceived that to expel the Timurids from India and prevent their return the authority of a tribal chief would not suffice, and that he must wield that of a sovereign. He constantly warned his nobles that it was owing to the feuds and quarrels of the Afghāns and to their lack of a national spirit that Bābur had been able to invade and establish himself in India, and his admonitions, enforced by sterner measures, were so effective that, perhaps for the only time in history, he, an Afghān himself, established and ruled an Afghān kingdom in which none was for a party and all were for the state.