Mughal Administration c8.s1.2

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: