Mughal Administration c5.s5: § 6. Law and Justice.
Mughal Administration c5.s5
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§ 6. Law and Justice.
c5.s5.1
Sixthly, its attitude towards law and justice was opposed to modern conceptions. One of the most essential functions of a modern State is the administration of justice and the maintenance of order. Herein the Mughal Government was weakest and least capable of improvement and expansion with time. It, no doubt, undertook to defend the country from foreign invasion and internal revolt, and to protect life and property in the cities by its own agents. But the policing of the vast rural areas was left to the locality; it was done by the local *chauki-dārs* who were servants of the village community and maintained by the villagers themselves out of the village land or by a share of the crops, and who were not considered as officers paid and supervised by the State. Instead of the Mughal Government undertaking responsibility for rural peace and security, it made the villagers responsible for the safety of their own property and that of travellers in the neighbouring roads. There was, no doubt, a Government agent there, *viz.*, the *faujdār*; but his jurisdiction was too large to allow him to attempt the supervision of the police of all the villages in that region. His recognized duty was to prevent or punish wide-spread or notorious acts of violence, such as rebellion by local *zamindars*, organized raids by large gangs of robbers, or the withholding of land revenue on a large scale.
c5.s5.2
As regards justice, the Mughal Emperor loved to pose as the fountain of justice and followed the immemorial Eastern tradition that the king should try cases himself in open Court. The subject will be more fully treated in a subsequent chapter.
c5.s5.3
§ 7. The State declines all socialistic functions.
c5.s5.4
Of the provincial administration little need be said. The work at the head-quarters of the province, *viz.*, that of the local *subahdar*, *diwan* and *qazi* followed the well-known lines of their counterpart at the imperial Court. As has been well remarked by a European writer, "Every subahdar tried to play the Padishah in his own province."
c5.s5.5
But of the political and economic life of the people, especially in the villages, no account has survived, and for a sufficient reason. The State in those days, as I have already pointed out, contented itself with the police duties and revenue collection,[*] and did not undertake any socialistic work, nor interfere with the lives of the villagers, so long as there was no violent crime or defiance of royal authority in the locality. Every village was left free to continue the noiseless even tenor of its life along the old grooves, untroubled by the Government, if it did not trouble the Government. The State refused to take the initiative in social progress, or the economic development of the people (as distinct from the domains of the Crown or *khālsa sharifa*, where it was like a private landlord), or the promotion of literature or art (except for the Emperor's personal gratification), or the improvement of communication (except for military purposes). All these things, where done at all, were done by private enterprise. Where there was any organized village community the initiative in these matters was taken by the headman or council of village elders; in all other places, the centre of local life was the zamindar or petty Rajah.
c5.s5.6
The policy of benevolent interference and paternal guidance of the lives of the people adopted by the Buddhist Emperor Asoka in his empire 250 years before the birth of Christ, was not attempted by any Mughal Emperor except Akbar. Wherever the Mughal local officers showed too active an interest in local life (outside the provincial capital), it was against superior orders and in consequence of a corrupt love of gain or spirit of partisanship. And the result of such interference was always bad.
c5.s5.7
∗ "Administrative nihilism," as Huxley called it, or "anarchy *plus* the policeman."
c5.s5.8
Large empires of the mediæval stationary type of civilization and inhabited by diverse tribes, like the Chinese Empire, have held together, only because the central Government has wisely let the rural areas alone, giving to the people of each district freedom to live their lives according to immemorial usage if they supplied the fixed quota of local troops and their fixed share of the revenue of the State.
c5.s5.9
There was, therefore, something like local autonomy. But the geographical units enjoying such autonomy were so small and their activities were so purely municipal and social, that it would be more correct to say that the villages and small towns of the Mughal empire enjoyed parochial self-government rather than local autonomy. A people who do not possess political freedom and power of self-taxation for national (as distinct from sectarian or caste) purposes, cannot be said to enjoy local autonomy.