Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c54.s1.7

v4.c54.s1.7

The classic land of Mālwa had once been the fountainhead of Hindu culture. On her soil had been born the models of Sanskrit poetry and drama, science and the fine arts, dance and song, which still survive to enrich our national life. In the middle ages, romance and handicrafts had kept up the traditional fame of this province. But in the year 1798 the dark cloud of anarchy, rapine and popular suffering descended on the unhappy land. The peasant and the artisan lost the fruits of their labour and perished from brigandage or famine. The desolation of fields, the degradation of the women to servile concubinage, and the ruin of trade and industry, turned the most fruitful part of Aryāvarta into a wilderness, tenanted only by two-legged tigers and their servile jackals and unresisting human prey. This anarchy did not end with the crushing of the Pindharis by the British in the war of 1817, but continued to smoulder till the suppression of the Mutiny of 1858 and the dawning of the modern age. For Mālwa’s misery, the responsibility lies primarily on Jaswant Holkar’s unpatriotic ambition and in a lesser degree on Daulat Rao’s insane desire to extinguish the power of the House of Holkar, without having the capacity to replace it by an orderly and efficient government of his own.