The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c11.s2.7

c11.s2.7

In these circumstances the peasant had little interest in cultivating the land. Bernier observes that as the ground is seldom tilled otherwise than by compulsion the whole country is badly cultivated, and a great part rendered unproductive The peasant cannot avoid asking himself this question: Why should I toil for a tyrant who may come tomorrow and lay his rapacious hands upon all I possess and value without leaving me the means (even) to drag my own miserable existence? - The Timariots (Timurids), Governors and Revenue contractors, on their part reason in this manner: Why should the neglected state of this land create uneasiness in our minds, and why should we expend our own money and time to render it fruitful? We may be deprived of it in a single moment Let us draw from the soil all the money we can, though the peasant should starve or abscond³⁵ The situation made the tax-gatherer callous and exploitative on the one hand and the peasant fatalistic and disinterested on the other. The result, in Berniers own words, was that most towns in Hindustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched material; that there is no city or town (that) does not bear evident marks of approaching decay.³⁶ Wherever Muslim despots ruled, ruin followed, so that, writes he, similar is the present condition of *Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Palestine*, the once wonderful plain of *Antioch*, and so many other regions anciently well cultivated, fertile and populous, but now desolate Egypt also exhibits a sad picture ³⁷