History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c84.s1.t2: § 2. Mughal conquest and its benefit to Bengal.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c84.s1.t2
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§ 2. Mughal conquest and its benefit to Bengal.
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In the 16th century Bengal had been an unhappy scene of anarchy and desolation from the decay and dismemberment of its independent provincial sultanate. The misery of the people can be guessed not only from the bloody annals of the ruling houses of Gaur, but also and more vividly from the social back-ground on which the new religion of Chaitanya (1485-1533) appeared as a welcome healing balm to the stricken hearts of millions. The evil was aggravated by the Mughal conquest of Delhi and Jaunpur and the crowding of the defeated Pathans into Bengal. The middle 16th century was darkened by rapid changes of kings, disputed succession, local independence, and the annihilation of wealth and culture through political turmoil.
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In the midst of this internal decay and exhaustion of the old order, its conquest by Akbar came as a blessing to the province. But it took twenty years to complete the change of masters, and therefore during Akbar's reign Mughal rule in Bengal was more like an armed occupation than a settled administration. His viceroys had to content themselves with the nominal submission of the old independent Afghan princelings and Hindu ruling zamindars, and to leave the actual government of the province to them. The Emperor's subahdars merely received the tributes, but did not establish direct imperial administration over the people, except in the district round the capital and the strategic cities held by their assistants, the faujdars. Over most of the country zamindars and humbled scions of ancient sultans ruled as before, though not with the title and pomp of kings. The Mughal governor's writs did not run beyond the capital city and its environs. The huge though irregular armed forces under the various zamindars remained quiescent but undestroyed. They only waited for some weakening of the Emperor's power, some catastrophe at Delhi, to assert their independence once again. Such an explosion might occur any day. The Mubarak Shahi, Iliyas, Muhammad Shahi, Abyssinian, Sharifi, Sur and Karrani dynasties had each ruled over Bengal for its brief day and then gone. Who could say that the upstart Turki house of Babur would last longer?
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§ 3. Mughal peace prevails in Bengal through out the 17th century.
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The repeated victories of Man Singh and, even more than these, his spirit of moderation in victory and natural desire to spare old houses, had maintained peace in Bengal during Akbar's last years. But with the accession of Jahangir (1605) and the recall of Man Singh from Bengal (1606) a change in the situation became inevitable. The change was, however, precipitated and intensified by the character of the Emperor's new viceroy, Islam Khan, who governed the province for six years, (May 1608—11 August 1613). A most ambitious active and high-spirited noble, he gave himself royal airs and could not brook the least insubordination in any zamindar. By a series of campaigns, which have been most graphically described in the memoirs of his general Mirza Sahin Shitab Khan,—he crushed all the independent zamindars of Bengal, destroyed the last remnant of Afghan power in Mymensingh, Sylhet and Orissa, and imposed full Mughal peace and direct imperial administration upon all the parts of Bengal. This revolutionary and beneficent change was completed by the year 1613. Thereafter Bengal enjoyed profound internal peace for nearly a century and a half, because the wars with Kuch Bihar, Kamrup, and Assam were all outside the province, the rebellious incursion of Prince Shah Jahan (1624) was a quickly passing blast, and the piratical raids from Chatgaon in the rivers of the Delta and the contest between Aurangzib and Shuja (1659-1660) touched only the southern and western fringes of the province.
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Islam Khan's successors pushed back the frontiers of the independent Mongoloid Rajahs of the Kuch and Ahom families to the western bank of the Bar Nadi (by annexing Hajo) and thus protected Bengal from raids on that side. Under Mughal peace, as fully and finally imposed in 1614, Bengal recovered wealth and population, trade expanded by rapid strides, industries developed, and a great indigenous literature grew up in the hands of the Vaishnav sect.
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The Arracanese, and subsequently their agents, the Portuguese pirates of Chatgaon, were a pest to the riverside districts of East Bengal; but this evil was removed early in Aurangzib's reign (1666) by Shaista Khan, and thereafter there was nothing to check Bengal's natural power of recuperation, except occasional calamities,* which were however purely local in their effect. This peace and prosperity, the gift of the Mughal empire, was fully utilised by the European merchants, especially the English and the Dutch, whose trade grew by leaps and bounds from the middle of the century onwards and whose factories and purchase-agencies stimulated production and wealth in the country.
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∗ E.g., a cyclone (hati-shunra) in August, 1668, [M.A. 74.]