History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c82.s1: § 1. Early Jat disturbances near Agra.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c82.s1
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§ 1. Early Jat disturbances near Agra.
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The endless wars in which Aurangzib became involved in 1679 and which were to continue till his death, began very soon to react on the political condition of Northern India. The Emperor left Delhi in 1679 for Rajputana, and thence proceeded to the Deccan two years later. For the remainder of his reign all his sons and highest generals were assembled there. In unvarying succession Northern India continued to be annually drained of its public money and youthful recruits in order to fill the ever-gaping void caused by the Deccan wars. Reports of occasional disasters to the imperial arms, of Prince Akbar's rebellion, Shambhuji's daring raids, and the hopeless entanglement of the Emperor with Bijapur, Golkonda and the Maratha people, reached the bazars and hamlets of Northern India with the usual exaggerations. Years passed away, and yet the Emperor did not return to his capital, nor did any of the princes. The rich old provinces of the empire north of the Narmada were left in charge of second-rate nobles with insufficient troops.
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At the same time, the long caravans of merchandise, State revenue, army provisions, and the families and property of the nobles, so frequently making their way to the far-off South under slender escort, offered an irresistible temptation to robber tribes. The great royal road, leading from Delhi to Agra and Dholpur and thence through Malwa to the Deccan, passed directly through a country inhabited by a people whose predatory instinct can be kept in check only by the terror of superior force. These are the Jats, a race of hardy peasants whose bodily vigour and growing numbers had made them spread rapidly from the north-eastern frontier of Rajputana to the bank of the Jamuna, filling the present Agra, Mathura and Aligarh districts as well as the Bharatpur and Alwar States. Northwards their settlements dotted south-eastern Panjab, and southwards the adjacent parts of Malwa. Whether the Jats were really descendants of the ancient nomadic Getae is uncertain, but though they are to-day essentially agriculturists, their many affinities with the wandering predatory tribe of Gujars have for many centuries made them, equally with the latter, the greatest enemies of public peace and private property. The Jat population in a province requires strong government and constant vigilance on the part of the ruler. As the proverb runs, "The Jat, like a wound, is better when bound."
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In the administrative slackness and military weakness which affected the Mughal Government in consequence of the Deccan wars, the Agra district was the first to feel the truth of this proverb. The ill-guarded wealth of the rich cities and mansions of the metropolitan *subah* and the valuable convoys moving along the king's highway, called forth the cupidity of the Jats, now that the fear of the Emperor's return was daily growing more remote. Here was a surer means of growing rich than by the slow process of painfully tilling a grudging soil under an uncertain rainfall. And such a course of rapine involved little risk, as the weak local troops could not always punish the robbers in the field, nor follow their quickly fleeing bands to the nooks of their wide jungly country.
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The Tenwa clan of Jats had first entered the Mathura and Aligarh districts about 1600 as servants and peasants, but in the next sixty years they had grown powerful enough to make themselves masters of the Joar pargana. Their chief Nandaram had withheld revenue at the end of Shah Jahan's reign, but had been forced to submit in 1660. Nine years later the Jat peasantry rose under Gokla, the zamindar of Tilpat,[*] killed Abdun Nabi, the Mughal faujdar of Mathura, and spread disorder through the Mathura and Agra districts. After nearly a year of fighting, the rising was suppressed with terrible bloodshed by Hassan Ali Khan, the Jat stronghold was taken, Gokla was captured and put to death, and their mud-forts were dismantled. [Vol. iii. ch. 26 and 35.]
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∗ There is a Tilpath, 14 m. s. of Delhi and 3 m. n. of Faridabad. Joar (Jewar) in the Aligarh district is, however, 28 m. s. e. of it (Ind. At. 49 S. E.)