Mughal Administration c5.s4.5

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.