Mughal Administration c5.s2: § 3. The aims of the Mughal State.
Mughal Administration c5.s2
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§ 3. The aims of the Mughal State.
c5.s2.1
Before we can understand the Mughal administrative system correctly, it is necessary for us to realize its nature and aims.
c5.s2.2
By its nature it was a military rule and therefore necessarily a centralized despotism. To the Muslim portion of the population the sovereign was the head of both Church and State, and therefore for them he undertook socialistic functions. But towards his non-Muslim subjects he followed the policy of the individualistic minimum of interference, *i.e.*, he contented himself with discharging only the police duties and the collection of revenue. The support of public education was not a duty of the State,—indeed it was recognized as a national duty even in England as late as 1870. According to Hindu and Muhammadan political thought alike, education was the handmaid of religion. If the king spent anything on education, it was not an act of State, but a private religious benefaction for acquiring personal merit in the next world. Some schools were subsidized by the Padishahs, but it was only because they were attached to mosques or taught by families of holy men already in receipt of imperial bounty, or, in other words, because they served as seminaries for training ulema (theologians) for the service of the State Church. [Cf. Ency. Islam, iii. 170.]
c5.s2.3
Similarly, the encouragement of art and literature was a purely personal matter with the king; its aim was to procure for him personal recreation or glorification, and not to promote national culture. Here the head of the State was exactly on the same footing as a rich private citizen and he recognized no higher obligation to his people.
c5.s2.4
In short, under Mughal rule the socialistic activities—I use the word in its broadest sense,—of a modern State were left to the community, to society or the caste brotherhood, and the student of Indian administration has to pass over them in silence.
c5.s2.5
The aim of the government was thus extremely limited, materialistic, almost sordid.
c5.s2.6
A minute study of the history of the Mughal empire in India on the basis of State papers and other original sources, impresses us with certain features as broadly characteristic of the administration.