Mughal Administration c9.s7: § 8. Abwabs or illegal cesses.
Mughal Administration c9.s7
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§ 8. Abwabs or illegal cesses.
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I shall now discuss in detail the ābwābs or exactions made on various pretexts in addition to the regular land-revenue or custom duty. These imposts were again and again declared by the Muhammadan sovereigns to be illegal and forbidden within their realms, but they soon reappeared with some changes in their items. Thomas in his Revenue Resources of the Mughal Empire has given from Persian sources lists of the ābwābs abolished by Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1375 A.D.) and Akbar (about 1590). Those prohibited by Aurangzib in a farmān dated 29th April 1673, are enumerated in Mirāt-i-Ahmadi, i. 286—288 (with explanations on pp. 260-264), Z. f. 135, and D. f. 102. But these three sources do not agree in all points; Mirāt names forty-one, Z. seventyfour, and D. seventy-eight ābwābs as abolished at this time. In Bengal nineteen such imposts continued to be levied, but from the tenants only, till the 19th century, when the British law-courts finally put an end to them as illegal. (Rampini’s Bengal Tenancy Act, 4th ed., pages 255-256.) We are thus in a position to make a comparative study of the growth of ābwābs through several centuries of our history.
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The ābwābs may be divided into six broad classes :—
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(a) Duties on the local sale of produce, like the municipal octroi duty of certain towns in modern India, but taken by the State.
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(b) Fee on the sale of immovable property.
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(c) Perquisites exacted by the officials for their own benefit, and fees or commissions levied on behalf of the State, on almost every conceivable occasion.
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(d) License-tax for plying certain trades.
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(e) Forced subscriptions.
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(f) Special imposts on the Hindus.
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The imposts abolished by Akbar are named in the *Ain-i-Akbari*, ii. 66-67, of which a somewhat different version is given by Thomas in his *Revenue Resources*, 17-19. Both these lists require correction in the light of the explanations of several of the items given in this chapter.
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Jahangir abolished the duties named *tamghā* and *mir-bahari*, "together with the taxes of all descriptions which the *jagirdars* of every *subah* and every *sarkar* had been in the habit of exacting on their own account." [Elliot, vi. 493.]
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In addition to *abwabs* or illegal direct taxes on sellers and buyers of goods and practitioners of every trade and profession, there was another source of exaction, namely the private trade* of the local officials in defiance of the Emperors' repeated prohibitions, which imposed an oppressive burden of indirect taxation on producers and consumers.
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As late as 1665, we learn from Aurangzib’s *farman* dated the 20th November of that year, that the magistrates and other officers in Gujrat used to buy and sell on their own account by force, paying less than the market price to the vendors and exacting an unfairly higher price from the traders on whom they forced their goods. "Mutasaddis (collectors), seths (leading merchants) and desais (headmen) in many parganahs when the new harvest is marketed do not allow the public to buy it, but take up the whole of it themselves, and out of it they force on the traders whatever is rotten or spoilt, taking the price of good grain....... Governors and rich men cultivate every kind of kitchen vegetable and fruit in their own gardens and in those of the State, and force them on the vegetable-sellers at double the fair price... In Ahmadabad and the parganahs of that subah certain men have taken in farm (ijāra) the monopoly of buying and selling rice, and nobody can deal in that grain except with their consent; hence, rice has become dear in Gujrat." [Mirat, i. 260.]
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∗ Called *tarak* in Persian [*Ghiyās-ul-lughat.*]
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The evil custom of local governors and even faujdars opening the packages of traders on the road and taking out whatever they liked at prices fixed at their own caprice, was known as early as Jahangir’s reign and was definitely forbidden by that Emperor in one of his twelve rules. [Elliot, vi. 496.] But the practice continued, as we know from the European travellers in India. As late as the beginning of the 18th century we find Aurangzib writing a stinging letter of censure to his grandson Azim-ush-shan, the governor of Bengal, for conducting such unfair private trade (sauda-i-khās.) [Rivaz-us-salatin. Eng. tr. 246, and I.O.I.MS. 3021, In fact, in mediæval India, the corrupt greed of the ill-paid officials found unchecked indulgence from the system of public taxation, which was crude, not clearly defined nor sufficiently made known to the public, but often varied from reign to reign. The timidity of the common people and the weakness of the central Government and its lack of a sufficient number of trusty agents left the population helpless under official extortion. The same commodity was subjected to taxation twice or thrice over, in spite of the Emperors' prohibition.
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A farman of Aurangzib, dated 20th November 1665, gives illustrations of the illegal exactions on the people of Gujrat; the same practices must have prevailed in the other provinces of the empire also. These forms of extortion are described below.