Mughal Administration c8.s1: § 1. Official dislike of village life and indifference to village interests.
Mughal Administration c8.s1
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§ 1. Official dislike of village life and indifference to village interests.
c8.s1.1
The administrative agency in the provinces of the Mughal Empire was an exact miniature of that of the Central Government. There were the governor (officially styled the *nāzim* and popularly the *subahdār*), the *diwān*, the *bakhshi*, the *qāzi*, the *sadr*, the *buyutāt*, and the censor; but no *Khān-i-sāmān*. These provincial bakhshis were really officers attached to the contingents that accompanied the different subahdars rather than officers of the subahs as geographical units. The practical effect, however, was the same.
c8.s1.2
The administration was concentrated in the provincial capital. It was city-government, not in the Greek sense of the term, but rather as a government living and working in cities and mainly concerning itself with the inhabitants of the cities and their immediate neighbourhood. The Mughals--after due allowance has been made for their love of hunting and laying out pleasure gardens and their frequent marches,--were essentially an urban people in India, and so were their courtiers, officials, and generally speaking the upper and middle classes of the Muhammadan population here. The villages were neglected and despised, and village-life was dreaded by them as a punishment. No doubt, the villages were the places from which their food and income came; but that was their only connection with them. Life in a village was as intolerable to them as residence on ‘the Getic and Sarmatian shores’ away from ‘the seat of empire and of the gods’ was to a cultured poet of imperial Rome. This feeling comes out very clearly in a Persian couplet:
c8.s1.3
Zāgh dum su-i-shahar wa sar su-i-deh.
Dum-i-ān zāgh āz sar-i-u beh.*
The tail of a crow was turned towards the city and its head towards the village;
Surely, the tail here was better than the head!
[‘better’, *i.e.*, nobler or happier.]
c8.s1.4
The provincial Government kept touch with the villages by means of (1) the faujdars posted to the subdivisions, who almost always lived in the district towns, (2) the lower officials of the revenue department, who did the actual collection from the peasantry, (3) the visits of the zamindars to the subahdar’s court, and (4) the tours of the subahdar. The contact, however, was not very intimate, and the villagers, as I have remarked in the first chapter, were left pretty much to their own devices, uninfluenced by and indifferent to the Government at the chief town of the province, so long as they paid the land-tax and did not disturb the peace.