Mughal Administration c5.s4: § 5. The State as a manufacturer.
Mughal Administration c5.s4
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§ 5. The State as a manufacturer.
c5.s4.1
Fourthly, in Mughal India the State was the largest manufacturer, or rather the only manufacturer on a large scale in respect of several commodities. The modern practice of Government buying ready-made goods in the open market, or giving orders for large quantities to contractors, would not have answered in those days of cottage industries, when production on a large scale by private capitalists with a view to sale was unknown. The State was, therefore, forced to manufacture the commodities it needed.
c5.s4.2
And its need was very large. Twice every year, in the rainy season and the winter, a robe (khilat) suitable for the season was presented by the Emperor to every mansabdar, and the number of mansabdars in 1690 is given as nearly 7,500 who were paid in cash and 7,000 who held jagirs. (Z. 15a.) For the higher nobles, one suit of the robe of honour consisted of several articles of apparel. In addition to these two seasonal gifts, the princes of the blood, the vassal Rajahs and many of the mansabdars and Court officials received robes of honour at the two birthdays of the Emperor (viz., according to the lunar and the solar calculations), the lunar anniversary of his coronation, the two I'ds, and down to Aurangzib's reign on the old Persian New Year's Day, when the Sun enters the Aries (nau-roz). As a matter of rule, *khilats* were also bestowed on most persons when they were presented at Court or took leave, or were appointed to posts, and, for some time in Aurangzib's reign, on converts to Islam.
c5.s4.3
It will thus be seen that the imperial Government had to keep a vast stock of cloth and ready-made robes for its need during the year. Their supply was assured by the State maintaining many factories (*kārkhānahs*) of its own in the principal cities of the empire, where skilled workmen were brought together (sometimes from distant provinces), placed under a Government superintendent (*dārogha*), paid daily wages, and made to produce their handicrafts which were duly stocked in the stores.
c5.s4.4
The same thing was done with regard to various articles of consumption and luxury required by the Emperor's household. It was the business of the *Khān-i-sāmān* or Lord High Steward to buy such goods as were available in the market and manufacture the others well in advance of the time when they would be required. A detailed study of the *karkhanahs* will give us an idea of the immense field of State activity in the industrial sphere.
c5.s4.5
Fifthly, the Mughal Government was a highly centralized autocracy. The Crown was the motive power of the entire administrative machinery. Where the Government is absolute, the supreme authority concentrated in one man's hand, the territory large, the means of communication between the districts slow and difficult, the transfer of local officers frequent, and no political life or local initiative left to the people,—there the natural consequence is the multiplication of official correspondence and the growth of a vast mass of written records. The Mughal Government, except in the actual conducting of campaigns, was a *kāghazi rāj*, i.e., paper Government. Its officers had to maintain many books, such as copies of correspondence, nominal rolls, descriptive rolls, history of the services of officers, newsletters and despatches received, as well as accounts in duplicate or triplicate, summary or full,—besides keeping an army of spies and couriers for the information of the central Government.
c5.s4.6
As an experienced Anglo-Indian administrator remarks in criticising the system described in the *Ain-i-Akbari*,—"Akbar was a master of detail: but here [in the *Ain*] detail is pushed to the extreme... It is everywhere assumed that the control of business depends on the compilation of appropriate registers, which is one of the besetting delusions of the native official of our days." (W. Crooke's *N. W. Provinces*, p. 101.)