Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c37.s1: § 1. Najaf Khan's moral degeneration after becoming regent
Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c37.s1
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§ 1. Najaf Khan's moral degeneration after becoming regent
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Mirzā Najaf Khan held the regency of Delhi for a little over two years,—from 19th November 1779 till his death on 6th April 1782. He lived at the capital all this time and was never able to go out on tour or campaign. A march to Rajputana for tribute-collection in the company of the Emperor, or at least one of his sons, was twice proposed, in March and October 1780, but both times the project was given up owing to illness of the leader or lack of funds for fitting out the royal train. The first half of the next year was taken up in making arrangements for the gorgeous celebration of the marriage of the Emperor's favourite son Akbar Shah. And in August 1781 Najaf fell into a decline which grew worse in time and by the end of the year was found to be a hopeless case of consumption. For the first three months of 1782 he continued to linger, but more dead than alive. Therefore, his period of actual work as regent extended over twenty months only, namely from 11th December 1779 when he removed to the regent's official residence, the mansion of Qamruddin, to the beginning of August 1781. In this period only two expeditions were undertaken, viz., the joint attack on Jaipur by Murtaza Khan Barech and Mahbub Ali Khan (April 1780—Feb. 1781) and Mirzā Muhammad Shafi's long campaign against the Sikhs (Feb. 1780 to 1782.) Both of these will be described later.
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About Najaf Khan's internal administration and the condition of the Court the capital and the districts still under the sway of the Crown, we possess daily bulletins for 8½ months, supplying information with a degree of detail and authenticity unequalled by any other period of Mughal history. They cover more than a thousand pages of the Persian manuscripts transcribed for Claud Martin at Lucknow and now preserved in the British Museum (Or. 25,020 and 25,021.) These months are so fully typical of his administration that the absence of newsletters for the other months hardly affects our judgment. They throw a lurid light on the character of Najaf Khan, the misery endured by the helpless Emperor and his household, the sufferings of the subject population and the disintegration of the army, and they prove the regent's utter incapacity as a civil administrator.
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A poor solitary adventurer from Persia, who had not a single relative or patron among the Delhi nobility, a Shia soldier whose only kinsman in India, the Nawab of Oudh, long pursued him with deadly malignity, had now become the supreme director of the empire of India at the early age of forty-two. He had achieved this feat by sheer merit, which shone in unmistakable light by contrast with the worthless peerage and effete royalty of the later Mughals. But if Mirzā Najaf's rise was astounding, the end of his career was no less meteoric.
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As the first officer of the administration, Najaf had henceforth to reside at Delhi, and Delhi proved the grave of his body and of his reputation in two years. The hardy abstemious soldier who had never tasted forbidden drink or unhallowed love before, soon turned into a typical Nawab in his private life. The diplomat whose coolness calculating power and strenuous activity had won the admiration of the Europeans who had seen him, now became a sluggard with a fuddled brain, whose highest skill was displayed in putting decisions off from day to day and evading difficulties by making smooth promises. The serpent that caused his fall was Latāfat Ali Khan, an eunuch general formerly in Oudh service and a brother Shia. This man introduced to Najaf Khan's notice a woman of bewitching fascination but abandoned character whom Latāfat had wedded; and she, entering Najaf Khan's private wine parties as a hand-maid in attendance, soon made herself his mistress and the minister of his pleasure in respect of other women. The regent began to spend his days and nights in attending singing and dancing by professional women. He frequently dined out with Latāfat or his friends and every dinner was followed till late at night by carousal and dancing in the harem. Of this we have mention with tiresome frequency in the daily reports of his doings that went to Lucknow.∗
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∗ Br. Mus. Or. 25,020 and 25,021 (chief source.) Ibrat, ii. 25. Zikr-i-Mir, (printed), p. 138.
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Excess in wine and women quickly sapped Najaf Khan's vitality. Delhi was an exceptionally unhealthy city in 1780, 1781 and 1782 and we read of repeated illness and child mortality in the royal family throughout this period. Najaf's friends complained that his constitution could not bear the change from his former active open-air life in camps and fields to the enforced inactivity of the close insanitary capital. He began to be troubled by long fits of sickness as early as October 1780, and though the doctors pulled him through, he would not listen to their advice to practise temperance, and after a year of such excess a slow secret fever seized him in August 1781 which ultimately developed into consumption and conducted him to a premature grave in 1782.
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To any one who has followed Najaf Khan's campaigns against the Jats or Ruhclas, it would be incredible, but for the most authentic contemporary evidence in our possession, that this great general could now indulge in freaks of insane frivolity worthy of imbecile voluptuaries like Abdullah Qutb Shah of Golkonda or Wājid Ali Shah of Lucknow, as the following incident illustrates:—"On 4th and 5th June 1781, the Amir-ul-umara taking his entire harem with himself, in the company of Latāfat Ali Khan made an excursion to Wazirabad [i.e., Wazirpur, north of Delhi fort.] At four gharis of the night he ordered the women of his zanāna to loot the melon-beds on the bank of the river near which his tents were pitched. Then he attended dancing till midnight; also next morning till one quarter of the day. The baskets filled with these melons were ordered to be sent to his mansion in Delhi." [Or. 25,020, f. 312.]
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§ 2. Misrule and administrative breakdown, State bankruptcy and universal suffering.
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Latafat Ali, as the minister of the regent's pleasure, practically ruled the State. His servants did as they liked to the people of Delhi and no redress could be had from their oppression by appealing to Najaf Khan or to the helpless sovereign. His Mughalia troopers, who had a suburb (called Mughalpura) north-west of the walled city to themselves, defied the custom officers and police and beat them with impunity. Even the Emperor's retainers living in the city were robbed and insulted by Najaf's servants, and Shah Alam's indignant complaining produced no effect.
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In fact, while the regent revelled in pleasure, the administration of the realm broke down. As Shah Alam complained, “Owing to Mirzā Najaf’s neglect of the administration, the empire is falling to pieces ; the soldiers, receiving no pay, are dispersing in bitterness of mind.” And again, “There is maladministration in all the territories under Najaf Khan, and yet he is sunk in pleasure and repose in the company of Latāfat Ali Khan, and takes no step to remedy this sorry state of affairs. Latāfat has gained such a hold on his mind that he agrees to everything that this man tells him.” [*Ibid.*, f. 260 & 302.]
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In the ceaseless pursuit of pleasure, Mirzā Najaf neglected the business of the State and left the administration in the hands of his Kashmiri diwans and Shia eunuchs, who acted as they pleased. The result of this rottenness in the head of the Government was the suffering of the people, even in the capital itself, and the failure of revenue collection. The oppressed peasantry in the masterless realm rose in despair and fought the local collectors ; then an armed force had to be sent to crush them and sack their villages, which meant that this source of revenue was ruined for years to come. The highest statesmanship and unremitting attention to detail alone could have remedied this evil ; but these virtues were nowhere to be found in the kingdom of Delhi then. The mischief was aggravated by a prolonged drought and failure of crops which began to rage throughout upper India from 1780. While the price of grain and fodder kept the famine level, the State could get no money for paying its servants or feeding its troops and their mounts. Every one starved—the Emperor, his vast harem, the numerous salātin (or former Emperors' grandsons and great grandsons) in their fort-prison, even the menials and guards of the royal household,—and the blame for it was laid on Mirzā Najaf. And rightly, because he had gained the regency in the place of Abdul Ahad by swearing before Shah Alam and putting his seal on a Qurān, which the Emperor held as a pledge of his fidelity, that he would supply the Emperor's monthly subsistence money more punctually than his Kashmiri rival had done. And now when Najāf proved even more in default of payment than ever before, an intolerable situation was created.
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In his financial distress, Mirza Najaf at one time thought of releasing Abdul Ahad from captivity and restoring his mansion and property to him in return for a ransom. He made Najaf Quli Khan his intermediary in these negotiations and a payment of four lakhs was mutually agreed upon. But the Kashmiri diwans set the Mirzā against the liberation of his rival as dangerous, and Najaf then changed his mind, thus putting Najaf Quli Khan in a false position. He showed a similar lack of firmness and sagacity in respect of the Jaipur tribute, by constantly swaying to and fro between different and mutually jealous counsellors, so that in the end he actually received little, whereas by following a moderate but consistent line from the outset he could have given an early peace satisfactory to the Jaipur Rajah and promptly secured a reasonable but much larger sum. In the matter of the demand on Bhai Desu Singh’s heir Lāl Singh, we see the same vacillation and folly on his part. Evidently he had ceased to be his own master.
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When driven into a corner, he tried to escape by giving bills on his bankers, especially Lālji Mal, but these were returned dishonoured as he had long before exhausted his funds with them and even the advances that could be taken by hypothecating the next season’s revenue. The unhappy regent sought to put off a declaration of his bankruptcy by every imaginable trick of evasion and false promise, till at last his countless creditors lost all faith in his words. His one remedy was persuasion (*fahmānidan*), and this he sent with his agents who were bidden to run after disgusted and mutinous captains and other creditors of the State and try to pacify them with words. But this magic pill by a too frequent use had lost all its efficacy. They would not take his words, they insisted on something more substantial. Almost every day there was an angry scene in his office made by his starving captains and the agents sent by the starving Emperor to dun him. They openly taxed him with evasion and cried out, "We cannot any longer accept your promises to pay us tomorrow. Give us a plain refusal and dismiss us, if you like, but do not try to befool us like children."
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The Emperor called him a hardened liar, a man of deceit, and in the bitterness of his soul cried out, "Abdul Ahad was a hundred thousand times better than you. I have no faith in you, nor ever had." The ladies of the imperial harem, equally exasperated by the withholding of their allowances, vowed to link their arms together and drown themselves in the Jamuna rather than constantly whine for their subsistence money and yet not get it for months together, while their credit with the shop keepers was exhausted. They even went into a hunger strike for some days. To the emissaries who came to offer Najaf Khan's excuses for his default of payment, "His Majesty said things which were not fit to be spoken." One day, driven to extremity by his distress, he told his slave Qambar, "If you eat any meal today, it will be drinking swine's blood. Go to Najaf Khan's house and sit down before him [in dharna.] Don't eat anything but prevent him too from eating, till the allowance of the harem is realised in full." Another day he told Maulavi Atāullah, "My condition has come to this that I have no second coat in my wardrobe." Then, before his sons and nephews he wrote the verses: —
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“The master of the world is ruining the world
Through Najaf Khan and Afrāsiyāb.”*
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Another day he cried out, “I am sick of this life, —no subsistence money, overwhelming debt to the bankers and traders of Delhi. I cannot bear the shame of it any longer. O God! quickly mingle me with the earth!”
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Mirzā Najaf at last realised that in grasping at the supreme office in such a State he had only gathered a Dead Sea apple as the fruit of his life’s endeavour. One day, when weakened by illness he came to Court, he laid his head down on the Emperor’s feet, and wept in shame. Not only did he fail to show the least spark of statesmanship and administrative genius during these two years, but he had not even the business instinct of discovering able and honest instruments and trusting them with power and his confidence in their work. He lived and died a mere soldier, though a fine soldier for that age, no doubt.
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This single redeeming feature of Najaf’s character as regent comes out most clearly in the daily news-letters which tell us of his passion for getting new and better guns cast (especially by European experts like Mons. Levassoult), his frequent testing of the guns old and new, his personal inspection of artillery practice and the parade of sepoy battalions, and his eagerness to raise disciplined battalions in the place of the rabble of indigenous troopers. Even amidst strangling financial distress, he could not resist the temptation of engaging a renowned and experienced captain like Shaikh Kabir and setting him to raise battalions of sepoys drilled in the European fashion, though he had nothing but promises of jagir to offer in payment.
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∗ Jahān-rā Jahān-dār dārad kharāb, Ze dast-i-Najaf Khān wa Afrāsiyāb. [Or. 25,020 f. 92 a.]
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As the historian plods his painful way through these thousand and more pages of daily reports of Najaf Khan's regency, he feels that he is visiting the world of shades, by a dolorous path, through a murky air, with the hopeless shricks and agonised groans of the living who are calling for death ever ringing in his ears. He wonders not why the Delhi empire fell but how it could continue even after this. He understands the nature of the burden which Mahadji Sindhia took upon his shoulders and which all but crushed him.