Later Mughals v2.c17.s2.1

v2.c17.s2.1

Akbar had guarded against this danger by making the first beginnings of the conversion of a military monarchy into a national State,—in effect, though not in constitutional form. He tried to range the Hindu warrior tribes behind his hired foreign troops, as the second and more reliable line of defence for his throne. Under him and his successors, Hindu Rajput soldiers had carried the Mughal banners to the banks of the Oxus and the Helmand in the west and those of the Brahmaputra and the Karnafuli in the east. They had garrisoned the Khaibar Pass, defended Garhgaon against the Ahoms and stormed Chatgaon from the Burmese. But Aurangzeb's attempt to annex Jodhpur on the death of his old servant Jaswant Singh, his invasion of Mewar, his incessant destruction of Hindu temples and his rigorous imposition of the hated poll-tax (jaziya), not only alienated the Rajput clans, but convinced all other Hindu races of India that they had no lot or part in the Mughal State and that for the preservation of their honour and liberty of conscience they must look elsewhere. This was the opportunity of the Mahrattas. This belief, rooted deep in the minds of the Hindu officers and vassals of Aurangzeb, made them indifferent or secretly hostile to their master's cause during his wars with Shivaji and his successors. To the Rajputs and Bundelas, who had so long been the staunchest supports of the Mughal cause, the Mahratta hero appeared as their heaven-sent deliverer,—a Rama slaying Ravana or a Krishna slaying Kansa. This feeling breathes in every line of the Hindi poet Bhushan's numberless odes on Shivaji. He really voices in smooth and vigorous numbers the unspoken thoughts of the millions of Hindus all over India. At the end of the 17th century they had come to regard the Mughal Government as Satanic and refused to co-operate with it.