Mughal Administration c17.s8: § 8. Gradual decline of the people.
Mughal Administration c17.s8
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§ 8. Gradual decline of the people.
c17.s8.1
There was no hereditary peerage in Islam, no recognition of the right of private property. Every nobleman's lands and personal effects were confiscated to the State on his death. If his son got any portion of them, it was as a mere act of grace on the part of the sovereign. This rule, no doubt, prevented the slackening of effort, but it also destroyed the basis of civilization, *viz.*, the accumulation of savings from the past for improvement in the future. All was ephemeral in such a society; the economic prosperity and position built up by an individual noble was levelled to the ground at his death, and his son had to begin his career as a commoner from the very bottom without being able to take advantage of the progress made by his father. Thus, generation after generation an Islamic country witnessed the same process of building up fortunes from the smallest beginnings and undoing a life's work at death by the confiscation of the private property of the deceased man to the State and the reduction of his sons to the rank of poor commoners.
c17.s8.2
So much for the richer classes. As regards the common people, the Muslim State made no attempt to strengthen the nation, to develop the national character, or ensure the economic prosperity of the people. No independence of thought was allowed, and the grossest kind of flattery was expected and encouraged by the Court. Hence, no first-rate genius in literature or art was produced among the Indian Muhammadans.
c17.s8.3
The Court was the only centre of culture and the only nursery of the fine arts (if we except a few temples in the far-off South.) But the nation in general did not benefit by it, and Court patronage had a really demoralizing effect on creative genius. Hence, Hindu and Muhammadan literature and art in mediæval India fell far short of the productions of democratic Greece or England.