Mughal Administration c6.s1: § 1. The Mughal Sovereign's legal position and powers.
Mughal Administration c6.s1
- Language
- English
§ 1. The Mughal Sovereign's legal position and powers.
c6.s1.1
According to the theory of the Quranic law, the sovereign is only the commander of the true believers (*āmīr-ul-mumnin*) and is responsible to the general body (*jamāit*) of the Muslims for the proper discharge of his duties. But no constitutional machinery for controlling or judging him, such as a parliament or council of ministers responsible to the people, was in existence in any Muhammadan country or even conceived of. The Muslim State was essentially a military State, and depended for its existence on the absolute authority of the monarch, who was also its supreme general. The Roman Imperator's functions were similar, but according to the constitution of Rome, the sanction of the Senate to important measures of State and the popular election of the chief officials were devised as checks (however futile in practice) on the Emperor's absolutism. No such check existed in the Islamic world even in theory, though in practice the sovereign's action was often influenced by his fear of the Muslim soldiery and his reluctance to incur social odium.
c6.s1.2
No doubt, it was open to a number of theologians (*ulema*) to issue a decree deposing the sovereign as a violator of the Quranic law and therefore unfit to reign. But the only means of enforcing such a decree was a rebellion. There was no constitutional body that could peacefully depose one king and set up another. In fact, the successful removal of a tyrannical Sultan always implied the rise of a pretender with a superior military force at his back. The regular forces of the State were bound to obey the king *de facto* and not the *ulema* nor the council of ministers.
c6.s1.3
The Mughal Emperor had no regular council of ministers. The *wazir* or *diwān* was the highest person below the Emperor, but the other officers were in no sense his colleagues. They were admittedly inferior to him and deserved rather to be called secretaries than ministers, because nearly all their work was liable to revision by the wazir, and royal orders were often transmitted to them through him.
c6.s1.4
As a matter of practice, when the Emperor held his private consultation or *diwān-i-khās*, the other high officers (*viz.*, the chief Paymaster, the chief Qazi, the High Steward and the Commander-in-chief, if any), usually attended along with the wazir, and were consulted. But many important questions were decided by the Emperor and the wazir alone without the knowledge of the other ministers. It need hardly be said that neither the lower ministers nor even the wazir could serve as a check on the royal will. They could advise but never vote, and the insecurity and dependence of their position made it impossible for them to contradict the king even when he was clearly going on a wrong course. The Mughal government was, therefore, a one man rule, and Aurangzib, like his contemporary Louis XIV, was really his own prime-minister.
c6.s1.5
From this it will be seen that the Mughal Emperor had no Cabinet in the modern sense of the term. His ministers were mere secretaries who carried out the royal will in matters of detail ; but they could never influence his policy except by the arts of gentle persuasion and veiled warning ; they never resigned if he rejected their counsels. In short, the ministers directed the administration only when the Emperor slept. Such ministerial control was really a violation of the spirit of the constitution, (if I may use the name, where the thing did not exist) ; it indicated a state of anarchy like the periods when the Witenagemot effectively controlled the royal government of Anglo-Saxon England.
c6.s1.6
The immensity of the Mughal Emperor's power can be judged from the fact that he was the head of the Church and the State alike. Every Muslim sovereign is, in strict theory, the Khalif of the age, or the latest successor of the Prophet in the command of the faithful, and so long as he is not deposed by the verdict of the Quranic lawyers, his power is supreme.
c6.s1.7
The Mughal Emperors, like all other Islamic sovereigns, had to play a twofold part; *viz.*, to govern all the people in their dominions as their king, and also to be the missionary defender and agent of the creed of a *section* of their subjects. Therefore, from the Muhammadan portion of their subjects they levied the *zakāt* or tithes, amounting to one-fortieth of every man's annual increase, which they were bound to spend for the benefit of the faithful only,—by building mosques, subsidizing pious men and theological teachers, endowing saints' tombs and monasteries, relieving Muslim paupers and providing dowries for Muslim maidens. This zakāt passed into the public treasury in the same way as the land-tax or the custom duty. The best illustration of the Emperor's headship of the Church and the State alike is furnished by the fact that in later ages the Muhammadan rulers abused their trust by spending the zakat on their personal needs or for the general purposes of the Government.