History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c62.s1: § 1. Military aristocracy governing Bijapur provinces.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v4.c62.s1
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§ 1. Military aristocracy governing Bijapur provinces.
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Military revolt was the curse of the Bijapur sultanate. It had itself originated in the assertion of independence by a foreign general of the decadent Bahmani empire, and the decline of its own royal power was attended by the same dismemberment of the kingdom into a number of military fiefs. The State was not national; it did not try to strike its roots in the soil. The government was a pure military occupation and its power was upheld by a number of mercenary generals among whom all offices of power and trust were divided. The chief races who formed the dominant aristocracy were the Afghans (with their fiefs in the western parts, from Kopal to Bankapur), the Abyssinians (ruling over the eastern province, viz., the Karnul district and a part of the Raichur Doab), the Sayyids who headed the Mahdavi sect, and the Arab Mullas of the Navaiyat clan of Konkan. The Hindus, both public servants and vassal Rajahs, were a depressed class, and the highest among them, such as Shahji Bhonslé and Venkatadri, had no secure standing or protection from outrage when oppressed by the Muslim nobles.
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The official body that had made the State its own* was, therefore, alien in origin; but it had settled in the soil with no idea of returning to its original homes, and it had practically converted itself into a hereditary feudal baronage. Each of these races mainly married within its own tribe and thus could not become assimilated to the native population. The disintegration of the Bijapur monarchy, therefore, presented a scene different from the disruption of the Roman empire, when, in the words of Vinogradoff, "The disruptive forces of local interests and local separation came to assert themselves; society fell back to a great extent on the lines of local life and of aristocratic organization." (*Cambridge Med. Hist.*, i. 563.)
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In the Deccan there were provincial separation and aristocratic organization of society; but the line of cleavage was personal, not territorial; its root-cause was not an assertion of local life and local aspirations, but the ambition of the local viceroy. The people played no part in the change; they obeyed the independent rebel Nawab as their fathers had obeyed the Nawab's predecessor, viz., the viceroy loyal to the central Government. Nor did the independent provincial Government take a peculiar colour from the locality; it merely bore the stamp of the race of its new ruler. There is no reason to suppose that, if Siddi Masaud had made himself Nawab of Ikkeri in Kanara instead of Karnul in Telugu-land, his form of administration and Court-life would have been different. It was essentially a foreign product planted in the soil without any regard for the past history and present character of the natives of the locality.
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∗ Dr. Fryer noticed it as early as 1675: "So miserable is that State where the other members grow too powerful for the head, as in this constituted government of Deccan [i.e., Bijapur], where the king's munificence to the grandees has instated them in absolute authority over their provinces, that they are potent enough to engage one another, and countermand the king's commands unless suitable to their humours." (ii. 46—47.)
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This alien aristocracy of office naturally formed no integral part of the State. Its aim was purely personal gain, and so long as the pay and pension of its members were secure they did not care who was the sovereign of the country of which they were nominally a part. No doubt, the different members of this dominant class occasionally united under the banners of the central Government; but it was always from hope of personal gain or fear of personal loss, as, for instance, when a rich neighbouring Hindu principality was to be raided, or when a Mughal invasion which threatened them all with removal from office had to be resisted. But such men could always be bought by the enemy for a price; they had no patriotism because they had no *patria*; they were truly political Bedouins, "orphans of the heart,"* nomads who lived in India but were not of it.
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The State founded on the loyalty of such public servants is an edifice built on sand. At each foreign conquest the people merely changed masters. The old rulers had contented themselves with discharging police functions, preserving internal peace when they could, and the newcomers did the same thing on being settled in the conquered land. The life of the people was untouched by the political change, and they, therefore, could not be expected to rally round the crown in its hour of need, as the citizens of a national State are sure to do.
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The decline of the Adil-Shahi monarchy merely illustrates this well-known principle of political philosophy, and it is now the historian's mournful duty to depict the sickening scenes which attended the dissolution of a State that had once been the queen of Southern India.
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∗ "In pure knowledge, there can be neither native nor foreign. Emotion, on the other hand, is entirely a matter of locality......... Every man's heart has its own country.........The unity of Humanity is never even dimly perceived by...the seeker after foreign ways and foreign thoughts, whose shame is his own mother,—the man who has no native land." (Sister Nivedita in *Mod. Rev.* Aug. 1911.)