The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.402

v3.c20.402

The transportation of the population of Delhi has been described as a punitive rather than an administrative measure. A measure adopted in the following year, the enhancement of the assessment on land in the Doāb and the introduction, with a view to further taxation, of a census of the houses and cattle, partook of both characters. The Hindus of the Doāb were disaffected and turbulent, but it is inconceivable that they should have been guilty of the folly, imputed to them by Muhammad, of inviting the Mughuls to invade the country. They had had experience of Mughul raids, and would not have prepared a scourge for their own backs, but the measure was designed to replenish the treasury as well as to punish the people, and it failed of both its objects.