Mughal Administration c17.s10.11

c17.s10.11

It was the fatal defect of Mughal rule that it always continued to bear the character of a military occupation of the land and did not try to build up a nation or a homogeneous State. The glories of Agra and Delhi in the golden days of Shah Jahan ought not to blind us to the fact that the Mughal Emperors never followed the first principle of political science, viz., that "there cannot be a great empire without a great *people*." Under even the best of them, though there were great ministers and generals, the mass of the people remained "human sheep" as in the worst days of the past. The Englishmen who overthrew the Indian Nawabs and Maharajahs may have been a handful of men—some of them not even professional soldiers; but they had behind them the enormous reservoir of the British democracy with all its collective talents and resources, while our Nawabs and Maharajahs had behind them none but a few self-seeking followers and hireling troops. They did not lead any national resistance to the foreign conquerors.