Fall of the Mughal Empire v2.c28.s10.2

v2.c28.s10.2

In the declining days of Aurangzib, while the Emperor was absent in the Deccan for a quarter century and all his best officers and troops were concentrated there, individual Jat village headmen, like Rājārām, Bhajjā and Churāman, led predatory bands of their clansmen to rob the royal highway from Delhi to the South and even the suburbs of the capital city of Agra. But these risings, however successful at first in causing loss and mischief, had been ultimately suppressed by the imperial Government through the house of Jaipur. Up to the middle of the 18th century there was as yet no Jat State, no politically united Jat nation, no Jat king standing clearly above the other village headmen or even recognized as first among equals; but only a robber leader whose success had drawn to his banners many of his peers in social status as partners in his adventures and plunder. But even this small beginning of a tribal organization and foundation of a State was totally destroyed when in 1721 Sawai Jai Singh captured Churāman’s stronghold of Thun, Churaman committed suicide, and his sons Zulkaran and Muhakam Singh were turned out to till the soil or to wander over the face of the earth. The Jat levies raised and held together by Churaman; after escaping the slaughter of the battle-field, had been dispersed to their homes and forced to turn their swords into ploughshares. The city of Thun itself was ploughed by asses under orders of the victor, to make it an accursed soil, unfit to serve again as a seat of royalty. The work of Rajaram and Churaman left no trace behind it, and their successor had to begin everything from the very foundations.