Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c2: Foreword
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c2
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Foreword
v1.c2.1
The birth of the New India in which we live was preceded by the death of a political and social order under which the millions of this country had been nurtured for two centuries and a half and which had done great things for them. The Mughal Empire, established in 1556, had united much of the Indian continent under one sceptre, given it a uniform civilisation whose conquering light had penetrated beyond the bounds of that empire, and on the whole promoted the general happiness of the people in a degree unapproached except in the mythical past. It broke the isolation of the provinces and the barrier between India and the outer world, and thus took the first step necessary for the modernisation of India and the growth of an Indian nationality in some distant future. The achievements of that empire under four great sovereigns have been the worthy themes of the historians of Akbar and Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzib. But the exhaustion of this civilising force with the consequent ruin of this country has hitherto repelled historians, probably because of the dismal nature of the subject which presents no spectacle calculated to elevate the human mind or warm the human bosom.
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And yet our immediate historic past, while it resembles a tragedy in its course, is no less potent than a true tragedy to purge the soul by exciting pity and horror. Nor is it wanting in the deepest instruction for the present. The headlong decay of the age-old Muslim rule in India and the utter failure of the last Hindu attempt at empirebuilding by the new-sprung Marathas, are intimately linked together, and must be studied with accuracy of detail as to facts and penetrating analysis as to causes if we wish to find out the true solutions of the problems of modern India and avoid the pitfalls of the past.
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The light of our fathers' experience is indispensably necessary for guiding aright the steps of those who would rule the destinies of our people in the present. Happily, such light is available in unthought of profusion. The dissolution of the old order in India did not form a dark age, during which the activity of the human mind ceased or the human brain and the human hand left no memorial of their working. On the contrary, the Eighteenth Century in India is illumined for its historian by a host of witnesses of the most diverse races, creeds and tongues and recording events as looked at from all different points of view. We, no doubt, lack detailed official annals like those written for Akbar and his four immediate successors; but the Indian actors in the scenes and detached foreign observers alike have left a multitude of private memoirs and journals which are in some respects of even greater value than the former class of works though lacking in their minuteness of dates and names. For this century masses of manuscript news-letters have been preserved, giving us the current news in the freshest form. The records of the Maratha Government have at last been made available to students in their entirety. The State-papers of the English and the French have been printed in our own lifetime, and of the still unprinted material in these languages preserved in public libraries, most helpful lists have been published (notably Hills' Home Miscellaneous and the Calendar of Persian Correspondence ) The travel-books, diaries and memoirs of the early Europeans in India form a vast literature, now mostly too rare to be obtained easily, but often giving priceless information on specific points and lighting up the economic and social condition of the age as no native work does.
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The materials are vast and varied; but this fact does not constitute the difficulty of the historian of the period so much as the immense number of the separate political bodies and centres of action created in the country by the dismemberment of an empire that had once embraced nearly the whole of India. A history of India in the 18th century which would attempt to deal with every one of these provinces or States in all its actions will be like a bag of loose stones constantly knocking against one another and not a single solid edifice.
v1.c2.5
The present writer is here making the first attempt to synthesise the Persian, Marathi, English, French, Hindi, Rajasthani and Sanskrit sources, and reconstruct the story of the fall of the Mughal Empire from the invasion of Nādir Shah in 1739 to the British conquest of Delhi and assumption of the keeper-ship of the puppet but still legitimate Padishah in 1803. But the nature of his subject has enforced a strict limitation on him. Dispersion of interest could be avoided only by keeping the eye constantly fixed on the centre of the empire,—the Emperor and his keepers, —and rigidly eliminating every side-issue that may divert the mind from the main theme. Thus, provinces that had cut themselves adrift from the empire, like Bengal and Bihar under the English from 1757, Malwa and Gujrat from 1741-50, the Panjab after 1757, Oudh after 1761, and the six Deccan subahs after 1748,—will not have their events narrated here, except for the briefest references when needed to light up some problem or action of the central Government. The Anglo-French struggle for an Indian empire will be totally omitted. Rajputana and Bundelkhand, though now owing little more allegiance to Delhi than those lost provinces did, remained the cockpit of Northern India, and the activities of those who held Delhi overflowed into these two regions almost to the end of the century. They will, therefore, be embraced in this survey. The internal affairs of the Maratha States are no concern of the historian of Delhi, except where they served as the motive force of some Maratha activity in Northern India, and to that extent alone will they be noticed.
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It is hoped by these limitations to give unity of structure and connection of interest to this work Where so many centres have to be touched, a certain amount of repetition has been deliberately made, in order to refresh the distracted reader's memory, keep the main threads constantly before him, and clarify the issues.
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In reviewing the earlier history of the decline of the same Empire as narrated in William Irvine's Later Mughals, edited and brought down to 1739 by me, Mr. P. E. Roberts used a very apt image when he wrote: "It drives a broad pathway through a very tangled jungle.... It is a piece of work which badly needed doing, and it has been done with amazing, thoroughness.... The most valuable part of the book is the careful incorporation of Persian and Marathi unpublished material." The same woodcraft has been followed in this continuation of that work, but the jungle is much thicker here. There was at least one common head of the Delhi Empire up to 1739 (when Irvine’s book ends), one centre of Government in theory and almost always in practice. But after Nādir’s invasion the dismemberment proceeded apace and many independent centres sprang up, whose interplay makes the history of the succeeding period extremely complicated. But the reader is most likely not to lose his way in this many-wooded forest if the historian is constantly by his side to whisper, “Delhi is not far off.”
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Such being the scope deliberately chosen for this work, the first volume has necessarily to treat its subject at a greater length than would be strictly proportionate to its time-extent. It takes up the narrative at the departure of Nādir Shah and ends with the fall of Ahmad Shah, (the last Emperor of Delhi who showed any independence and by the time of whose death all the great men of the former generation had disappeared.) The reign of his shadowy successor Alamgir II (1754—1759) and the rule of his wazir Ghaziuddin Imād-ul-mulk will receive a very brief treatment, because the historical stage of Delhi is now dominated by Ahmad Shah Abdali, whose career leading up to his crowning victory at Panipat (1761) deserves to be studied in greater detail from the wealth of original material not yet used by any writer. Then follows a period of dull chaotic ferment for some twelve years, with little to detain the historian long. A new scene opens with the rise of Mahadji Sindhia who bestrides the plains of Northern India like a Colossus for two decades. This heroic figure it is my intention to study at length from the records in various languages in an almost overwhelming mass which I have been able to collect.
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From Mahadji's death (1794) to the British conquest of Delhi, the tale is well-known and if I tell it will be merely to round my work off.
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JADUNATH SARKAR.