History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s5: § 6. Other oppressors of the cultivators.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c85.s5
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§ 6. Other oppressors of the cultivators.
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In Southern India, with many parts of it harried by more than a century of warfare, the peasantry had many enemies to dread besides the regular fighters on both sides. The Mughal soldiers on their march often trod down the crops, and though the Emperor had a special body of officers for compensating the peasants for this loss (paimali-i-zarait), his financial difficulties led to the neglect of this humane rule. The worst oppressors of the peasants, however, were the tail of the army—the vast nondescript horde of servants, day labourers, darvishes and other vagrants who followed Aurangzib's "moving city of tents" in the hope of picking up crumbs where such a crowd had gathered. Particularly the Beluchi camel-owners who hired out their animals to the army, and unattached Afghans searching for employment, plundered and beat the country people most mercilessly. The banjaras or wandering grain dealer tribe, who moved in bodies, sometimes of 5000 men, each with his couple of bullocks loaded with grain, were so strong in their strength of numbers and contempt for the petty officers of Government, that they sometimes looted the people on the wayside and fed their cattle on the crops in the fields, with impunity. Even the royal messengers (called mewrahs in Gujrat) who carried Government letters, reports of spies, and baskets of fruits for presentation to the Emperor, used to rob the people of the villages they passed by, sometimes under the pretext of making good the losses in the fruits they carried. [Mughal Adm. Ch. 5.] The Emperor's repeated orders against this kind of iniquity were of no avail. [Mirat 304.]
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In the trail of the Maratha soldiers appeared the Berads and even the Pindaries—who were brigands pure and simple, without even the pretence of belonging to any army or carrying out the orders of any Government.
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Then, there were the land-stewards of rival jagirdars,—the incoming and the outgoing—of the same village. Under the plea of the never-to-be satisfied arrears of revenue, the late jagirdar's collector tried to squeeze everything out of the peasantry before he left, and even continued to stay in the village for some months after the arrival of his successor. And the new-comer, in order not to starve himself, passed the half-dead peasants through his fiscal grinding-mill.
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§ 7. Bankruptcy of Mughal Government.
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The English conquest of India was of a pulsatory character, it was achieved not by an uninterrupted succession of advances, but each aggressive governor-general was followed by a pacific economical non-interventionist. A Warren Hastings filled the financial void created by the wars of Clive and Vansittart, and laid the basis for the military expansion of a Wellesley, while the bankruptcy caused by Wellesley's frenzy of conquest was repaired by the recuperation of a sober plodding Barlow or Minto. The pacific Bentinck undid the ravages in the Treasury made by the bellicose Marquis of Hastings and Earl of Amherst.
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Not so Aurangzib. Ever since 1679, when he embarked on the spoliation of the kingdom of Marwar, his reign was one long warfare. He did not realise the necessity of intervals of peace and retrenchment, which would give breathing time to his subjects, recoup the losses of war, and lay by a reserve for future wars. He soon ran through his current revenue and the new tax (jaziya) imposed on the Hindus in 1679 and vigorously enforced by specially selected "pious" collectors. [K. K. ii. 278, 378.] Then he ordered the accumulated treasures of his ancestors, from Akbar downwards, to be taken out of the vaults of Agra and Delhi forts and sent to him in the Deccan. [K. K. 411; Storia ii. 255.]
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Thus, the last reserve of the empire was exhausted, and public bankruptcy became inevitable. The salaries of the soldiers and civil officers alike fell into arrears for three years. The men starving from lack of pay and the exhaustion of their credit with the local grocers, sometimes created scenes in the Emperor's Court, sometimes abused and hustled their general's business manager,—some, driven to desperation, beat to death the paymaster of their contingent.
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The imperial Government made reckless promises of money grant and high command to every enemy captain who was induced to desert and every enemy qiladar who was persuaded to surrender his fort. It was not humanly possible to keep all of these promises. The Mughal army, too, was immensely expanded in order to cope with the growing strength of the Marathas and their allies. The result was that the entire land in the empire proved insufficient for the total amount of jagir needed to satisfy the dues of all the officers included in the swollen army-list. As the imperial diwan Inayetullah Khan, on being urged by Aurangzib to grant jagirs to every one and leave no claim unsatisfied, remarked in despair, "The contingents of the officers who are daily passed in review before your Majesty are unlimited in number, while the land available for granting as jagir is limited (in area.) How can a limited figure be made to equal an unlimited one? [Hamid-ud-din's *Ahkam*, § 57.]
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Even when the grants of land in lieu of salary were drawn up by the Pay Office, they remained for years as mere orders on paper, the actual delivery of the villages to the grantees being impossible. At last the Emperor used to cry out in bitterness of spirit to his Paymasters, "How often have I told you that I do not need any retainers? Why do you not dismiss them? You do not realise the badness of your action, but refuse to listen to your master's words!" [K. K. ii. 411—412.] The interval between the order and the actual possession of the jagir, it was sarcastically said, was long enough to turn a boy into a grey-beard. [Ibid. 379.]
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How impossible of realisation were the promises of bribes made by the Government to enemy captains and ministers and how ruinous was the price at which forts were bought by Aurangzib is strikingly illustrated by the case of Matabar Khan, the wise and able governor of Kalian. He had secured the capture of some forts in the Nasik and Thana districts by spending Rs. 1,20,000 out of his own pocket in bribes to their commandants and his own army expenses; but the Emperor in return granted him only Rs. 30,000 or a quarter of his outlay, and even this small sum remained unpaid for years afterwards. If a minor Maratha hill-fort cost on an average Rs. 45,000 in cash to take it peacefully, the Emperor might well despair of taking all of them at this rate. And yet he obstinately went on capturing fort after fort by heavy bribery or by regular sieges which were ten times more costly. As Khafi Khan tells us, "Most of Aurangzib's generals, whether posted in far-off provinces or conducting sieges under his eyes, after some fighting used in the end to secure the capitulation of the forts by bribing the qiladars. The Emperor was informed of it by his spies, and used to pay to the officer who had thus contrived the surrender the exact amount of the bribe (neither more, nor less), under the name of reward"! [ii. 503.]
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The spirit of the Mughal army in the Deccan was at least utterly broken. The soldiers grew sick of the endless and futile war,* but Aurangzib would listen to no protest or friendly advice. Even his grand wazir Asad Khan, who had ventured to suggest that now that Bijapur and Golkonda had been conquered he had no more work to do and might as well return to Delhi, received a sharp reprimand, "I wonder that a wise old servant like you has made such a request...So long as a single breath remains to this mortal life, there is no release from labour." [Hamid-ud-din's Ahkam § 46.]
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A generation of imperialists grew up in the Deccan who had never seen a city or house of brick or stone, but passed all their lives in tents, marching from one encampment to another. [Dil. ii. 141a; see Ch. 57 § 2.] The Rajput soldiers complained that their race would not be able to serve the empire in the next generation, as they had to pass their lifetime in the Deccan campaigns, without getting any respite for going home and rearing up children. One home-sick noble offered the Emperor a bribe of one lakh of Rupees for transferring him to Delhi! [M. U. i. 457.]
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∗ "Owing to my marching through deserts and forests, my officers long for my death." Aurangzib to Muazzam in Anecdotes, §11.