History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v1.c9.11

v1.c9.11

The province of Multan contained a war-like and unsettled population divided into a number of clans by differences of race, creed, and traditions, and often engaged in war with one another. The addition of Sindh to his charge brought Aurangzib in contact with the wildest and most untractable Afghan and Baluch septs. For many generations past the royal authority had been hardly obeyed in the western borderland even in name, and the chieftains had lived warred and raided as they liked. Aurangzib was not the man to brook disorder and disobedience. But even he could do no more than make a beginning. The cause of law and order could get no local support among the people governed; everything depended on the strong arm of the ruler. It was impossible for him, in the few years of a viceroyalty, to break to peaceful life and law-abiding habits tribes who had never before known any government and who were in a fluid state of either expansion or extinction. Only justice strictly administered and backed by irresistible force for several generations, could have crushed out the predatory instincts of the Brahuis and Hots and taught them to obey a higher power than their chieftains' will. This moral transformation was reserved for another age and another race of administrators. What Aurangzib, however, could do