Later Mughals v2.c19.s1.10

v2.c19.s1.10

Among the authorities Harcharan-das alone says that the citizens rose in tumult when they were driven to desperation by the violent attacks of the Persian soldiers on their property and women. This statement goes against the probabilities of the case, because the time was only one day after Nadir’s arrival, when the amount of the ransom and the manner of levying it were still being discussed, and Nadir was not the man to allow a premature fleecing of the citizens or relax the discipline of his army in a foreign town. All other writers represent the Indian mob as the aggressors. The higher classes and all good men held aloof; but they took no active step to pacify or control the hooligans, because the old Government agency for maintaining order had been dissolved, the gentry were too much divided by caste creed race and profession to combine and organize a voluntary police at a moment’s notice, and their centralized autocratic Government had not developed their powers of initiative and self-help by giving them any opportunity of corporate action and municipal self-government.