Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c15.s7: § 3. Safdar Jang's administrative incapacity; causes of his downfall
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c15.s7
- Language
- English
§ 3. Safdar Jang's administrative incapacity; causes of his downfall
v1.c15.s7.1
For seven months after the murder of Jāvid Khan, Safdar Jang was the first minister of State without a rival and without any rebellion or foreign invasion threatening the realm. If he had possessed any real capacity or statesmanly vision, he could have used this interval of peace to restore the administration and strengthen the national defence. But he did nothing to reorganise the army, cement alliances or improve the finances. Worst of all, by his lack of far-sighted policy, greed of money and office, and reckless pride, he frightened the Emperor, alienated the other nobles, and disgusted the people of Delhi.
v1.c15.s7.2
He had employed his position as chancellor to take for himself the most fertile and easy jāgirs and the property of deceased nobles whenever the Government could venture to enforce the law of escheat. He had done this at first by going into shares with Jāvid Khan, but after that eunuch’s death as a sole monopolist. All other nobles starved and laid their unemployment and hardships at his door, but they had to fret in silence for want of any friend or champion. Safdar Jang as wazir was officially in supreme control of the finances. He selfishly seized all the revenue that came in and spent it on his personal contingent, so that the troops of other officers of State and even the Emperor’s palace-guard and artillery remained unpaid for years together, and the starving soldiery frequently rose in mutiny, rioted in the streets, mobbed their officers, blocked the gates of the palace or of the Paymaster's house, preventing ingress and egress and cutting off their inmates' supply of food and drinking water for days together. Such was the visible fruit of this dictator's administration.
v1.c15.s7.3
At the same time, while the wazir could not save his master from starvation or insult by his own troops, he was unable to defend the capital from outrage and plunder. The Marathas looted the environs of Delhi and even threatened to break into the city itself, and Safdar Jang could not remove them by force or bribery. In the district round Delhi, not to speak of distant provinces, highway robbery went on unchecked; the strong man collected the rents in the weak man's estate without fear. In a realm in the critical condition of Delhi at that time, the first minister of State frequently absented himself from the seat of the Government in order to look after his own interests in Oudh or Rohilkhand; the central administration naturally ceased to function and things drifted on without plan or aim.
v1.c15.s7.4
By trying to grasp at everything Safdar Jang ultimately lost all. Moderation in the hour of victory would have perpetuated his power. In an age when every public office was regarded as an heirloom, and the son claimed his dead father's post, not on the ground of his being the best candidate available but as the late incumbent's legal heir, Safdar Jang, himself a "new man", raised a host of enemies by trying to keep every office of power or emolument out of the hands of the Turāni chiefs and their followers. He forgot that the Turanis had been in supreme control of the administration for three generations, and they had built up a strong circle of subordinates, clients and dependent vassals. No true statesman can afford to ignore the real elements of power (*realen macht-factoren*) in the world in which he moves; he must come to terms with them, in the spirit of living and letting live. But this Safdar Jang could not do; he had not a single friend among the older nobility now that Ishaq Khan was dead and Salābat Khan in disgrace. With insane folly he had alienated Alivardi Khan, the governor of Bengal and Bihar, though united to him by religion. His policy of restricting the admissions to the Emperor's audience in his own interests and his boisterous attitude to the other servants of State filled the Emperor with a sense of humiliation and fear about his personal safety. As the Court historian writes, "The monarchy was utterly ruined. The Emperor, seeing the wazir's love of disturbance, promotion of the mean, and villainy of spirit and his own helpless condition, resigned all authority in the State to him and passed his days in pleasure in the harem. . . This wazir was a desolator of the realm and an impoverisher of his master." [*TAh. 44, 48a.*]
v1.c15.s7.5
The first task of a true wazir at that time should have been to reorganise the imperial army, which had been reduced in number, shorn of equipment and ruined in discipline. For this a regular and adequate supply of funds had to be ensured. But Safdar Jang looked only to building up his private hoard, regardless of his duty to the country. Therefore, the armed defence of the Empire became impossible and the wazir who had reduced the country to this condition had no right to hold his office.
v1.c15.s7.6
A contest was sure to come for the overthrow of such a grasping dictatorial but futile wazir, and Safdar Jang's blindness precipitated it within seven months of Javid Khan's death. Short-sighted, with no fixed policy save selfish acquisition, Safdar Jang made every possible mistake. In the duel between the Irāni and Turāni immigrants in India, the adhesion of the local Afghāns would turn the scale, and yet he goaded the Afghāns into becoming his mortal enemies. They had been at the outset most reluctant to measure swords with him, as they dreaded an encounter with the wazir of the Empire; they only wanted to be let alone. But thanks to his provocations and foolish conducting of campaigns, they soon learnt to despise his arms, while his base treatment of the dead Qāim Khan’s family and the atrocities of his Maratha allies made the Afghān settlers both east and west of the Ganges loathe him for ever. The Marathas were mere mercenaries, ever ready to transfer their venal swords to the highest bidder, and Safdar Jang’s depleted treasury could not compete with Imād’s untouched hoard. His faithful Jat allies had been ineffective against the Ruhelas and failed to turn a single field in his favour in the civil war that now followed. On the contrary, their plunder of Delhi and its environs,—long remembered under the ominous name of Jāt-gardi,—brought the deepest odium on his side and alienated the people of the capital and its environs from him as the patron of these licensed brigands.* Even his brave and devoted partisan Rājendra-giri Gosain created bitter indignation in Muslim society by his impartial strictness in revenue collection in the district of Saharanpur, where he humbled "the leading landholders of the place,—Sayyids of Barha, Afghans and Gujars, who had never obeyed any *faujdar* before,"—selling their women and children into bondage (which was the customary punishment of debtors and revenue-defaulters), while his Muslim predecessors had probably been equally harsh but had spared Sayyids and Shaikhs. [*TAh.* 44, 121*a*.]
v1.c15.s7.7
∗ “Suraj Mal looted Old Delhi, whose population was equal to, or rather a little bigger than, that of Shah Jahan’s city; the life property and family-honour (i.e., women) of the people were destroyed, and no one could escape from the Jat plunderers even by taking refuge in a holy man’s house.” Siyar, iii. 48. The reference is to Safdar Jang’s spiritual guide (pir) Khwajah Md. Bāsit. [Bayān, 279.]
v1.c15.s7.8
Safdar Jang's main reliance was on his Turkish soldiers, styled in Indian history as *Mughlia* and *Kula-posh* ("hat men" from their red Turkish caps), because the native Persians of Aryan stock and Shia faith made very poor soldiers. But these men were united to him solely by the cash nexus, and the higher bid in pay and honours made by Imād with the Emperor's authority easily induced them to desert to that side; their natural sympathies,—if any warmed their venal bosoms, were with Imād-ul-mulk and Intizām, both Turks by race and recognised leaders of the Central Asian settlers in India.
v1.c15.s7.9
§ 4. *Imad-ul-mulk appointed Mir Bakhshi.*
v1.c15.s7.10
But the greatest blunder of Safdar Jang was the promotion of young Imād-ul-mulk to the highest power and dignity, in ignorance of human character. When the first report of Ghāzi-ud-din's death reached Delhi (on 29th October, 1752), his family feared that the needy Emperor, at Intizām’s instigation, would seize the treasure stored in his Delhi mansion. His young son Shihābuddin, coached by his tutor Aqibat Mahmud Kashmiri, at once went to Safdar Jang’s house and from nine o’clock of that night till the noon of next day sat down there weeping and crying out in utter misery; he would listen to no consolation, nor consent to eat or drink anything. To Safdar Jang’s words of sympathy he replied (as taught by Aqibat), ‘‘You are my father, and as the late Ghāziuddin was a brother to you, I have really lost my paternal uncle. You are my only defender and patron now.’’ His persistence wore Safdar Jang out and at last the wazir vowed that the orphan would in future find a father in him. He made Shihāb-ud-din exchange turbans (in sign of full brotherhood) with his son and heir Shuja-ud-daulah, took him inside his harem, where his wife unveiled herself before Shihāb like a mother to her son, and finally he promised that he would use all his influence with the Emperor to secure the orphan’s succession to his father’s property, estates and even office. Then only could the youth be induced to break his fast.
v1.c15.s7.11
When the days of mourning for Ghāziuddin were over, Safdar Jang took Shihābuddin to Court and persuaded the reluctant Emperor to appoint him Mir Bakhshi (Paymaster-General of the Empire) with the titles of Ghāzi-ud-din Khān Bahadur, Firuz Jang, Amir-ul-umārā, Imād-ul-mulk (12 Dec. 1752) and later Nizām-ul-mulk, Asaf Jāh. Thus a boy of 15, absolutely untrained in war, who had come straight out of the hands of theological tutors and eunuchs, became the executive head of the army of an empire threatened by Afghāns on the west and Marāthas on the south. Ahmad Shah of Delhi and the people of the empire, no less than Safdar Jang, lived to rue this choice. Safdar Jang at first rejoiced that he had brought under his banner the second natural leader of the Turāni party and bound him for ever to his own side by the tie of gratitude, and thus set up the most effective check on Intizām-ud-daulah. But he was destined to be undeceived in a few months and to know that this smooth-spoken helplessly clinging lad was the deadliest viper that he ever nursed in his bosom; two successive Emperors of Delhi were put to death by him and the heir to the throne could find safety from him only in exile.
Linked texts (1)
- Bayān-i wāqiʿ — Khwāja ʿAbd al-Karīm Kashmīrī 1780, Persian