Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c6.s1: § 1. Life-story of the Delhi Empire
Fall of the Mughal Empire v1.c6.s1
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§ 1. Life-story of the Delhi Empire
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The first Muslim State of Delhi was born at the close of the Twelfth century, and from this centre it continued to expand with varying fortunes for two hundred years till at last it embraced the whole of Northern India and even overflowed into the Southern land beyond the Vindhya range. Thus all Hindustan came to be placed under one civilization, one official language, and during some short spasmodic periods under one sceptre also. Then, at the end of the Fourteenth century came the hopeless decadence of the royal house ; the unifying and protective Central Government disappeared; the Empire was broken up into jarring fragments whose mutual conflicts and the consequent set back to culture and material prosperity fill the next century and a quarter, till 1526, when the Turkish adventurer Bābur laid the foundation of a mightier political structure in India. This new-born Mughal Empire, after a short and all but fatal contest with the Afghān house of Sur, became established beyond challenge under Bābur’s grandson Akbar soon after 1560. In the succeeding hundred and thirty years, its growth in territory, wealth, armed strength, art and industry was rapid, uninterrupted, and dazzling to the eyes of the Asiatic world and even of lands beyond the confines of Asia. The whole of Hindustan and much of the Deccan too bowed under one sceptre; administrative and cultural uniformity was given to all parts of this continent of a country; the artery roads were made safe for the trader and the traveller; the economic resources of the land were developed; and close intercourse was opened with the outer world. With peace, wealth, and enlightened Court patronage, came a new cultivation of the Indian mind and advance of Indian literature, painting, architecture and handicrafts, which raised this land once again to the front rank of the civilized world. Even the formation of an Indian nation did not seem an impossible dream.
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But in the second half of Aurangzib’s reign we first see this natural progress arrested, and then, after a quarter century of heroic struggle by that monarch, when at last he closed his aged eyes in death (1707) we find that decline had unmistakably set in; Indo-Mughal civilization, whose agent was the Empire of Delhi, was now a spent bullet; its life was gone, it had no power for good left in it. But dissolution did not take place immediately after Aurangzib’s death. His wonderful capacity, strength of character, and lifelong devotion to duty had generated a force which held together the frame of the Delhi Government seemingly unchanged for thirty years after him. Whatever might happen in the frontier provinces, the Central Government still stood intact. But with a succession of weaklings and imbeciles on the throne, the downfall of the Empire was bound to come at last. The dry rot in the heart of the Mughal State manifested itself publicly when Bāji Rāo’s cavalry insulted the imperial capital in 1737 and his example invited Nādir Shāh’s invasion and the utter collapse of the Government of Delhi in 1739.
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§ 2. India after Nādir Shāh’s invasion.
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By the end of April 1739 the horrors of Nādir’s conquest came to a natural close in Delhi. Laden with the plundered treasure of the richest empire in Asia, the Persian conqueror left the Mughal capital on his homeward march on 5th May. Eight days later the Emperor Muhammad Shāh held his first public audience after his restoration and coins were once more stamped in his name, replacing those issued for Nādir Shāh in the interval. The Court chroniclers record that on this occasion the nobles offered their presents and the Emperor on his side conferred robes of honour and rewards on them. [D.C.] Thus the usual ceremonies of the imperial darbār were gone through as if no political disaster of the first magnitude had taken place in the meantime. But nobody present could forget that things were not as before the Persian invader's coming. The Emperor and his wazir were there as before, but the second officer of the realm—the Head of the Army, Khān-i-Daurān, had perished as well as Sādat Khan Burhān-ul-mulk, the most powerful of the provincial governors, and the Emperor's personal favourite Muzaffar Khān, besides a host of officers of lower rank but high connections. Ten to twelve thousands of the regular soldiery had fallen on the field of Karnāl and 20,000 people had been put to the sword within the city of Delhi itself. Sack and massacre had devastated lesser towns like Thāneshwar, Pānipat, Sonipat etc. The imperial treasury and the nobles' mansions had been drained dry to supply the indemnity exacted by the victor,—fifteen krores of rupees in cash besides jewellery rich clothing and furniture worth 50 krores more. The imperial regalia had been robbed of its two most famous and costly ornaments, the Koh-i-nur diamond and the Peacock Throne. The imperial family and the proudest peers had been forced to descend to a still lower depth of humiliation. The Khurāsāni leather-coat weaver's son had married his son to a princess of the family of the Pādishāh, and he had dragged to his bed all the handsome wives and maiden daughters of Muzaffar Khan, lately killed in battle. [Ashub, ii. 367 and 375.]
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In the months immediately following Nādir Shāh's invasion Heaven seemed to have taken pity on the sorely afflicted people of Northern India. In the next season there was adequate and timely rainfall, the earth yielded a profuse harvest, and all foodstuffs became cheap and plentiful, "as if to make amends for the people's recent sufferings." (Ashub, ii. 416.) But Nature is not half so much the cause of a nation's misery as Man. To outer seeming, "dignity and splendour returned to the Delhi Court after Nādir had left India, and the Emperor and the nobles turned to the management of State affairs and gave up all sorts of uncanonical practices." (Ibid.) But the moral canker in the Mughal Empire was too deeply seated to be killed by such outward show of piety and obedience to lifeless convention. A Nemesis worked itself out inexorably on the destiny of the Empire from the character of the Emperor and his leading ministers.