Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c15.s7.4

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.*]