The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c20.309

v4.c20.309

Muhammad Shāh demands our pity if he may not command our respect. Placed in a position which called for a genius he was a very ordinary person. Historians blame him for his devotion to pleasure rather than to business, but the tragedy of his situation was that the most absolute devotion to business by a man of his mental calibre would in no way have altered the course of events. A mere sickly puppet like Rafī‘-ud-Darajāt or Rafī‘-ud-Daula was perhaps hardly conscious of humiliation, but Muhammad Shāh appears to have realised both the hopelessness of the situation and his own powerlessness to amend it. The seeds of decay had been sown by Aurangzīb and the process was now nearly complete. The bigotry which had alienated the Rājputs and exasperated the Marāthās, the leniency which regarded laxity and even treachery as venial faults in a military officer and ultimately dissolved the bonds of discipline throughout the army, the shortsightedness which permitted or rather encouraged the erection of principalities on agglomerations of provinces, had now caused a result which is clear from a survey of the condition of the empire at the time of Muhammad Shāh's death.