Mughal Administration c9.s4: § 4. Lower revenue officials were harsh and extortionate.
Mughal Administration c9.s4
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§ 4. Lower revenue officials were harsh and extortionate.
c9.s4.1
The lower officials of Mughal India were incurably corrupt, while the highest were, on the whole, just and statesmanlike except an occasional diwan who inflated the revenue demand *on paper* and farmed the collection to the highest bidder with ruinous consequences, as can be illustrated from the revenue history of Orissa in the 17th century.
c9.s4.2
The subahdar of Orissa wrote in 1662: "The mahals of Crownland have been reduced to desolation and their affairs have fallen into confusion in consequence of the harsh assessment of an unreasonable amount of revenue and the neglect of details by the [new] diwan, Muhammad Hāshim. He transacts business in this way: when a candidate for kroriship accepts the post, Hāshim imposes on him the paper assessment of the parganah and sends him there, before he can learn about the [actual] yield of the place. After a short time, another man is secured for the post, and Hāshim Khan taking money for himself from this man, dismisses the former krori, appoints the second man and makes him promise a larger revenue than the first collector had engaged for. After a little time, a third man appears, offering a still higher sum to the State, and he is sent as collector to the parganah! ...The Khan has thus increased the revenue [on paper] twofold in some places and threefold in others, while the ryots, unable to pay, have fled away and the villages have turned into a wilderness." [Studies in Aur. Reign, xiv. § 15.]
c9.s4.3
The man was shortly afterwards removed from his office.
c9.s4.4
The Emperor, the High Diwan, and even the subahdar may have been just and kind in their treatment of the peasantry. But the lower official or revenue underling was the man on the spot, the person in direct relation with the ryots and therefore his harshness and greed affected the ryots far more effectively than the far-off Emperor’s or Chancellor’s kind intentions and benevolent proclamations. This fact was well-known in the 17th century.
c9.s4.5
The great and good High Diwan, Sadullah Khan, used to remark that a diwan who did not do justice to the ryots was a demon sitting with a pen and inkpot before him. The propriety of this epigram will become clear when it is remembered that in the Persian alphabet *a* is a long vertical line with a sharp downward point like an Indian reed-pen, while the letter *n* is formed by a circle open at the top, just like an indigenous inkpot. The word *diw* means ‘an evil spirit’; and hence *diwan* can be analysed into *diw* followed by *a* or a pen and *n* or an inkpot! (*Ruqaāt-i-Alamgiri*, letter No. 154.)
c9.s4.6
In fact, the cunning of the local officials and the subordinates of the revenue department was too much even for the lord of the Peacock Throne, and we find more than 50 *abwabs* flourishing immediately after the death of this very Shah Jahan.