The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.36

c15.s1.36

The direct route between Surat and Agra via Ahmadabad, which ran through the territories of tributary Rajput chiefs, was so beset with dangers and exactions that usually the longer route via Burhanpur was preferred, although the latter was far from free of risks. Moreover, the rules of the game, namely, making use of and involving oneself in the existing factional alignments, implied that only a part of the Rajputs were effectively tied into the imperial system, while the Mughal had to content himself with, at best, tributary arrangements with the others. In fact, the situation was even more complicated, for factionalism did not stop at the level of the chiefs of the great Rajput houses. It was not unusual for their sons and relatives, when they felt they had been wronged, to "take to the fields" with their retainers and start harassing their chiefs till a settlement was reached.⁴⁵ The latter feature could, of course, work both against and in favor of the Mughals, but in order to exploit it, they had to involve themselves in these dissensions. What is worse, involvement meant that dissension could all too easily spread to the Mughal side as well. So the careful balance between the limited capacity to establish and keep up imperial regulation and the threatening forces of the mawās essentially depended on the exploitation of local dissension and making alliances with certain of the contenders—Rajputs, Marathas, and others, as the case might be.