Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c55.s5: § 5. Causes of Shah Alam's poverty—his domestic discords
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c55.s5
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§ 5. Causes of Shah Alam's poverty—his domestic discords
v4.c55.s5.1
A royal family which bred with the fecundity of rabbits, needed an ever-increasing supply of money. The anarchy then raging all over the country reduced the actual collection from the Crownlands to less than a quarter of the standard revenue, while the blind old patriarch persisted in building up a secret hoard by laying aside some portion of the scanty sums that he every year received for his support. The inevitable result was beggarliness, starvation, and clamorous outbursts in the Delhi palace which never ceased till the British conquest.
v4.c55.s5.2
At the beginning of 1789, immediately after the hunting down of Ghulām Qādir, Mahādji supplied the Emperor with Rs. 300 a day in order to meet his immediate wants. This was a purely temporary arrangement. Soon afterwards permanent provision was made for the imperial household by assigning 32 mahals as *khālsa* with a net yield on paper of Rs. 16,91,000 a year, and these estates were farmed to contractors. The Emperor's monthly allowance having been fixed at Rs. 1,30,000, the revenue of these Crownlands could have provided the annually needed amount of 15½ lakhs, if the collections were normal. But the times were not normal, and the actual realisation from the farmers sank to four lakhs, that is, only a quarter of the expected revenue. Hence the imperial family had to live on quarter rations, or less, because a portion of the shrunken receipts was swallowed up by their keeper Shāh Nizāmuddin. Under British peace and British management, the actual collection from these Crownlands leaped up from four lakhs in 1807 to 15 lakhs in 1813. The Jamunā canals, which when assigned to Safdar Jang in 1750 used to yield 25 lakhs a year, were now choked up and unprofitable. (*DY.* i. 384, and 387, Kaye's *Metcalfe*, i, 365. *Asiatic Annual Register* for 1800, Misc. Tr. p. 37, Polier, on the canal.)
v4.c55.s5.3
But a shrunken income, made doubly painful by his growing miserliness, was not the only trouble in Shah Alam's household after his restoration to the throne. The polygamist was not happy with his numerous progeny. Soon after making Mahādji his regent, he had approached that chief and the English Government with a proposal for setting aside the claims of his eldest son Jawān Bakht and declaring a younger son, Akbar Shah as his heir. The reason was the superstitious belief that as the fugitive and penniless Shah Alam had learnt of his father's death and crowned himself Emperor (on 23rd Dec. 1759), while Akbar was in his mother's womb, this prince was born under the most auspicious star and he would bring glory to the imperial house if he filled the throne. But the Governor-General and Sindhiā alike refused to violate the rule of primogeniture. The question, however, was finally laid at rest by the death of Jawān Bakht in self-chosen exile at Benares on 31st May 1788.
v4.c55.s5.4
After Shah Alam had been rescued from the hands of the Ruhelā rebel, it was agitated in some political circles that, as blindness had now made him physically unfit to rule, he should be pensioned off, and Prince Akbar publicly installed as his heir in full possession of the powers of government. That prince was naturally eager for such a promotion. And then his father's love for him turned into hate. Shah Alam refused to part with his power and wealth and sounded the Marātha Court about declaring a still younger son his heir!
v4.c55.s5.5
The sons and nephews of Shah Alam, being driven to despair by their very niggardly allowances and the utter blankness of their future, one after another broke out of their prison-palace in Delhi and escaped to Oudh, the Deccan or Afghanistan.* These escapades created at the time some alarm and confusion but no real harm came out of them.
v4.c55.s5.6
∗ Escapes from Delhi palace,—Jawān Bakht (14 April 1784), Mirzāi, a Khwajāzāda descended from the daughter of Emperor Farrukh-siyar (25 Nov. 1789), Ahsan Bakht (when following the funeral procession of Empress Piyāri Begam, 4 Apr. 1790), Sulaiman Shukoh (c. March 1789), Sikandar Shukoh (on 22nd January, 1796). Similarly, two sons of Jawān Bakht left their home in Benares, namely Shigufta Bakht or Mirzā Hāji and Muzaffar Bakht or Mirza Juma, PRC. i. 243, 255. DC. DY. i & ii. Kālē Akh.)
v4.c55.s5.7
In despair of arguing Shah Nizāmuddin into greater liberality or honesty in payment, the Emperor once or twice wrote secret appeals to the British Resident with Sindhiā, to Sindhiā himself, to the Peshwā and the Durrāni Shāh, begging them to relieve his misery. Similarly Prince Akbar sent a secret complaint against Nizāmuddin to General De Boigne, the most influential officer of Sindhiā. The correspondence came to Nizāmuddin's knowledge and he sharply censured the king and the prince for this defiance of his authority as Sindhiā's agent and the sole medium of communication between the Delhi Court and the outer world. The trump card that the Cowrie Faqir could always put before Sindhia's inner council was the argument that such unauthorised diplomacy would enable "the English to thrust their feet into the Government of Delhi," and make the Pādishāh their vassal like the Nawāb of Oudh.