Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c37.s5: § 8. Mirza Najaf's character and achievement
Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c37.s5
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§ 8. Mirza Najaf's character and achievement
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The character of Mirzā Najaf Khan has been already critically examined in the attempt to survey his actual work in war and administration. It will, therefore, suffice if we briefly study his real place in Delhi history and appraise his success and failure in different fields and the effect of his death on the State.
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Mirzā Najaf Khan Zulfiqār-ud-daulah fills a large place in the memory of the Delhi historian only because he was the last great Muslim minister of the Mughal throne. He shines in the sunset hues of the dying empire by contrast with the smaller men who mismanaged the State for two years after him and finally passed the Government of Delhi on to the hands of other creeds and other races. Except in a limited sphere, he had no title to greatness if we are to judge him by his achievements. As a general, he had not the genius and originality of Najib-ud-daulah, nor the robust personal magnetism of the captains of an earlier age whose dash into the thick of the fray had often turned the doubtful tide of combat and whose comradery had cheered the hearts of hard pressed and drooping followers. But he possessed that cool leadership, that power of co-ordination and that skill in the choice of fitting instruments which were indispensable for success in the new system of war that the Europeans had introduced into India. He early realised that mobile field artillery and disciplined foot-musketeers were the decisive factors in this new warfare, and he therefore always set himself to making adequate provision for these two arms, and also to mingling them in effective proportion with the old heavy "Mughal horse." Herein lay his approach to military genius. No Indian chief before Māhādji Sindhiā engaged so many European officers.
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∗ Najaf's last illness and death.—DC. Ibrat. ii. 25-31. Muna Lal 234-237. G. Ali, iii. 150-151.
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His greatest defect was that he was no administrator. Himself illiterate, he lacked the no less unlettered Akbar's royal gift of choosing the ablest heads for the civil departments, charging them with the basic principles of his administration and seeing that his orders were in general being carried out. Thus it happened that during his two years of unchallenged power over the Central Government, and before that in the management of his jagirs, the revenue administration went to pieces and the resources of the State were neither increased nor husbanded. The great drought and famine which began in upper India in 1780 cannot be held as the true explanation of this failure. Insolvency dogged his steps throughout life and hampered his work at every stage, in spite of his gains in tribute and spoils of war. The reason was that he had no capacity for civil administration, and helplessly left the revenue management of the country in the hands of his Kashmiri Brahman diwans, who in the opinion of the Indian world in that age were a pale reflection of their Muslim fellow-provincials in low cunning and love of peculation.
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Even more fatal was his policy, born of indolence and timidity, of parcelling out the portion of the realm still obedient to the Crown among his lieutenants, each one of whom became a subahdar in his own district without the legal status, however, of that high functionary. Below these great semi-independent barons there were petty leaders of bands,—Mughalia Baluch and Afghan,—whom Najaf Khan paid by the grant of small estates, so that the remnant of the Delhi empire was dismembered into a vast number of feudal baronies which no weaker hand could control. These sucked up the yield of the land and impoverished the Emperor and the army of national defence. This legacy of trouble bequeathed by Mirzā Najaf all but crushed Māhādji Sindhiā and certainly delayed his reconstruction of the imperial administration by four years, a delay which wrought a momentous change in India's destiny.
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But the historian cannot deny that Najaf Khan was a statesman in his moderation in the hour of victory, his kindliness to the mass of the people, and his unerring sense of the realities of Indian politics. He never yielded to impulse or pique, never lost his temper, never grasped at more than he could win. Above all, he had the true mark of a born leader of men, he could attract and keep to himself very able lieutenants in war, though not in the more exacting pursuits of peace. His last years cast a benign halo over his memory; he gave a respite of peace and plenty to the capital. Hence the universal and sincere mourning at his death and the utter despair which his passing caused to the world of Delhi.