Historical Overview (Part Two)
How did the Mughal Empire go from one of the most powerful polities in South Asian (and arguably global) history, ca. 1650 ce, to barely a shell of itself roughly a century later? For many modern historians and other commentators, the answer to this question has often been fairly simple: Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (r.
1658-1707) deserves the lion's share of the blame. Though he is often characterized as the last of the so-called Great Mughals, Aurangzeb is nevertheless viewed in almost uniformly negative terms in modern historiography and cultural memory, based largely on the idea that his reign witnessed a “return to orthodoxy,” one that veered away from the pluralistic policies of his predecessors, thus alienating key Mughal allies (especially Rajputs and other Hindus), provoking rebellions and other forms of instability, and, in turn, creating the political vacuum into which the nascent British colonial state would eventually intervene from the 1750s onward.In this narrative, then, nearly all of South Asia's modern woes—from the political turmoil of the eighteenth century and the indignities of British colonial rule, to modern Hindu-Muslim antagonism, the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, and the mass violence associated with it—can be traced back to Aurangzeb's alleged zealotry. And the power of this modern narrative is only heightened when Aurangzeb's personality is contrasted (as it usually is) with that of his older and more “liberal” brother Dara Shukoh (d. 1659), who winds up being portrayed as a kind of tragic, even saintly, figure whose more tolerant outlook could have saved the empire (and by extension the nation) if only he could have secured the throne instead of his wily and orthodox rival.[1933]
Recent scholarship, however, has begun to revise our understanding not only of Aurangzeb and Dara Shukoh themselves, but also of the entire period (ca.
16501800), adding a lot more nuance to the old caricature of Mughal decline as simply a question of Aurangzeb's “orthodoxy” and its after-effects. Munis Faruqui has shown, for instance, that there was a great deal of complexity to Aurangzeb's admittedly rather stern personality, as well as many layers to his fraught relationship with his father Shah Jahan and his brother Dara (not to mention other members of the royal family). Moreover, by the standards of Mughal-Timurid princely norms, Aurangzeb was actually far more successful at preparing himself to rule—from building networks and alliances, to governing frontier provinces and leading successful military campaigns— than Dara, who, it must be acknowledged, was chronically ineffective in such crucial features of the exercise of princely power.[1934] Meanwhile, while it is no doubt true that Aurangzeb was more conventionally pious than most family members and imperial predecessors, the exact relationship between his personal piety and his policies is less clear. For instance, his notorious destruction of the Keshav Rai temple in Mathura (1670) and the Vishveshvar temple in Banaras (1669) could certainly, and to some extent justifiably, be interpreted as a sign of Aurangzeb's orthodox inclinations. But it must also be remembered that the two sites in question both had clear and direct patronage links to Aurangzeb's political adversaries.[1935] Moreover, in the case of Banaras, as elsewhere in India, there is quite a bit of evidence that Aurangzeb not only tolerated, but also actively patronized other Hindu institutions such as the Jangambadi muth, the Kumaraswamy muth, and the Kedar temple.[1936] Thus, whatever his personal beliefs, Aurangzeb's policies toward Hindu practices and institutions of worship in Banaras and elsewhere are best described, as Madhuri Desai has recently observed, as “varied and contradictory” rather than consistently antagonistic.[1937]Another example of Aurangzeb's more notoriously “bigoted” acts was his decision to reimpose the jizya tax on non-Muslims in 1679.
But note that he didn't take this step until some 20 years into his reign, suggesting that it was not some innate zeal for Islamic orthodoxy that prompted it but rather more specific, immediate considerations (including financial considerations). It was, therefore, perhaps not as much of a knee-jerk discriminatory gesture as it might at first appear.[1938] The rate of the tax varied according to one's ability to pay, and there were also multiple exceptions built into the edict—e.g., exempting the poor, the unemployed, the infirm, and so on, from payment altogether—and in any case, the decision was later rescinded by one of Aurangzeb's successors in 1720, so it is a bit hard to judge any long-term effects of the policy on social unrest in early modern South Asia generally. Another good example is the common complaint that Aurangzeb “banned music” on account of his religious zeal. But, as Katherine Butler Brown [now Schofield] has shown, Aurangzeb's distaste for hearing and patronizing music later in life had less to do with religious conviction than other personal factors. More importantly, he appears to have made no effort to prevent others (including members of his own family and inner circle) from continuing to lavish patronage on court musicians. It is thus more than a bit ironic, as Schofield observes, that classical Hindustani and other regional musical traditions didn't just survive, but in fact flourished, during an era when many people assume them to have been “banned.”[1939]Again, none of this is to deny that Aurangzeb Alamgir was, in fact, much more conventionally pious—even orthodox—than his predecessors (or successors, for that matter). It is simply to caution that the relationship between his piety, his politics, his imperial policies, and their long-term ramifications is far more complex and poorly understood than a lot of modern historiography and commentary allows.
So, if Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir's religious leanings are inadequate as an explanation for Mughal decline, then what happened? One important military-political factor was Aurangzeb's relentless pursuit of expansionary campaigns in the Deccan, especially in the second half of his reign.
Most of the major powers in the southern part of India—such as the sultanates of Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golconda— had already been brought into a subordinate position vis-à-vis the Mughal state, even before Aurangzeb came to power. Indeed, as a prince, Aurangzeb himself had twice served as the Mughal governor/viceroy in the Deccan (1636-1644, and then again in 1652-1657).[1940] But once he came to the throne he seemed determined to annex the Deccan sultanates formally once and for all, and the energy and resources expended on these campaigns created a significant strain on Mughal manpower and resources, to say nothing of the treasury.Meanwhile, during the early decades of Aurangzeb's reign there were notable challenges on some of the empire's other frontiers, both internal and peripheral— for instance, a major campaign on the eastern frontiers of Assam and Arakan in the 1660s, a Pashtun rebellion on the northwestern frontier in the 1670s, and “internal” rebellions among disaffected Jat peasants in the late 1660s/early 1670s and erstwhile Rajput allies in the 1680s.[1941] This Rajput affair, in fact, although initially precipitated by a local succession dispute, soon coalesced into a full-blown rebellion led by Prince Muhammad Akbar (1657-1706), who, in alliance with the Rathore Rajputs of Jodhpur and the Sisodias of Mewar, directly—but ultimately unsuccessfully— challenged his father for the throne.[1942] Complicating matters even further, this period also witnessed the founding in 1674 of an assertive new Maratha regional state in southwestern India under the dynamic leader Shivaji Bhonsle (d. 1680). (In fact, it was here, to the court of one of Shivaji's successors, that Prince Akbar initially fled after his failed rebellion, before eventually departing for asylum at the Safavid court in Persia.) This nascent Maratha state has an exceedingly complex history all its own, as does its entangled relationship with the Mughal state.
But suffice it to say, by the mid-eighteenth century the so-called Maratha Confederacy would emerge as one of the most powerful successors to Mughal supremacy in South Asia.These were just a few of the challenges to centralized Mughal rule that arose during Aurangzeb's reign, but ultimately it was the Deccan campaigns that appear to have had the most enduring negative consequences, overextending the Mughal military, political, administrative, and economic systems to a point of dangerous vulnerability. As Munis Faruqui sums up: “Although Awrangzib succeeded in pushing the Mughal Empire's physical frontiers to their limits, the imperial military forces and administration were seriously degraded in the process.... Ultimately, decades of warfare against shifting alliances of Marathas, Berads, and Telugus stymied the consolidation of imperial control over the south, led to plummeting morale in the Mughal ranks, and irrevocably damaged the long-standing aura of Mughal military invincibility.”[1943] One could add, moreover, that Aurangzeb's insistence on personally commanding these campaigns had left a significant leadership vacuum back in the northern Mughal heartland. He left for the Deccan in 1682, never to return to Delhi; and thus, for the last 25 years of his reign, the core Mughal territories of the Gangetic Plain had to be governed essentially in absentia.
All of this came at a time, moreover, when other long-term structural factors were beginning to put a strain on Mughal authority. One such baseline factor was the economy, which had become increasingly monetized over the course of the sixteenth and especially the seventeenth centuries. A practical effect of this shift was to put growing power in the hands of merchant and banking networks, many of them connected to regional elites and power brokers who increasingly relied on such networks to finance their military and revenue collection operations. These commercial classes had profited immensely from Mughal policies that had emphasized the building and securing of trade networks, both within India (i.e., connecting ports and provincial cultivating areas to regional market towns and, in turn, to major urban centers) and globally, via the booming early modern trade in Indian spices, textiles, jewels, saltpeter (for gunpowder), and other commodities destined for export markets.
As Christopher Bayly has demonstrated, these networks, and the commercial patterns they engendered, long outlasted the Mughal Empire itself and endured even into the colonial (and arguably postcolonial) eras of modern South Asia.[1944] But in the more immediate term, by the turn of the eighteenth century many successful merchants, financiers, and other “portfolio capitalists”[1945] were beginning to wield increasing influence—not just in commercial matters, but also in military and political developments. Indeed, as the military labor market in early modern India became increasingly cash based, regional powers—including even many of those still loyal to the Mughal state—needed ever-greater cash reserves in order to pay for troops' salaries and other military expenditures.[1946] New forms of revenue farming (i.e., contracting out the right to collect tax revenues) also empowered those with the wherewithal to take advantage of the money economy, such as regional middlemen, brokers, and bankers, on whom regional states—and even ultimately the Mughal state itself—increasingly depended for infusions of cash.None of this involved a direct challenge to Mughal political authority, at least not necessarily. But over time it did weaken the dependence of provincial and regional power brokers on the Mughal state for their financial well-being, and thus, in turn, lessened their incentive to prioritize the needs of the empire ahead of their own. This dynamic played out differently in different parts of India, as Muzaffar Alam and other scholars have recently shown.[1947] In some cases, like that of the Marathas or the emerging Sikh Empire in the Punjab, there were indeed direct challenges to Mughal political authority, albeit in ways that nevertheless remained deeply entangled with Mughal court politics and the need to account for Mughal power, especially early on (i.e., throughout the late seventeenth and well into the eighteenth centuries).[1948] Punjab also had the disadvantage of being in the direct path of assaults on northern India from Persia (1739) and Afghanistan (1748-1761). But in other cases, like those of Awadh, Bengal, and Hyderabad, the regional powers-that-be were largely content to continue the performance of symbolic subordination to Mughal power, even as they grew increasingly autonomous in their day-to-day operations, especially economically (an approach that the East India Company would also adopt from the 1760s onward). One glaring indicator of this trend in all three of the latter regions is the way in which the position of Mughal provincial “governor” (subadar) became, over the course of the eighteenth century, almost entirely hereditary in ways that earlier generations of Mughal rulers would never have allowed (except among Rajputs)— something we see reflected even in the new titles adopted by such regional governing lineages: the “Nawabs” of Awadh and Bengal, and the “Nizams” of Hyderabad.
One may ask, of course, why such increasingly semi-autonomous regional states did not simply break free of the Mughal imperial apparatus altogether and strike out on their own, instead of continuing to seek legitimizing authority from the emperor. One answer lies, as Muzaffar Alam has argued, in the fact that by the early eighteenth century the very success of the Mughal economy in the previous two centuries had made the regions too economically interdependent to thrive all on their own. There were, moreover, potent political rivalries between some of these emergent regional states, as well as continuing contests for power within them. Thus, while all of these areas gained a degree of practical political and economic autonomy over the course of the eighteenth century, none was entirely selfsufficient, and as a result most continued to compete for status and influence at the Mughal court itself—precisely, if a bit paradoxically, “in order to secure firmly their position in the regions”[1949] There was, in other words, a mutually beneficial interest in maintaining “the semblance of empire,” as Alam puts it, despite its faltering reality, because it continued to provide legitimacy to “the individuals and the groups who had hitherto constituted the empire and were now in power in the regions.”[1950]
Symbolically, in other words, the Mughal emperor's status as the “king among kings” (shahinshah) continued to have purchase long after the heyday of the Mughals' actual effective power, as did the cultural memory of Mughal authority as umbrella under which competing interests within the subcontinent could be worked out. In this, the memory of the Mughal state as a purveyor of “universal civility” (sulh-i kull), even if weakened somewhat by Aurangzeb's reputation for sectarian impulses, also likely played no small part.