Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c15.s7.6

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*.]