The four volumes of Fall of the Mughal Empire are the most impressive work of Indian history that I have read. They should be required reading in all of our schools for students aged 16, by when we are old enough to be able to look at the world around us through our own eyes. A lot of what we see around us in the India of 2018, we will be able to understand on reading this work. It is in that sense a shattering book, and one cannot think of too many that have such influence on the reader and have such ability to transform the way readers think.
Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s magisterial work spans only about seven decades of Indian history, from after the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah, till the end of the Maratha power in the first few years of the 19th century. His model in writing this in some ways was a British administrator named William Irvine, who died around 1911, and had written a work called Later Mughals.
This book by Irvine recorded the history of the Mughals from the death of Aurangzeb, which happened in 1707, till the sack of Delhi. This was a period in which the Mughal empire collapsed with alarming rapidity. It was already tottering in some ways, the most important way being financial.
Aurangzeb’s obsession with control over the Deccan meant constant war for half a century. And this in turn meant that the surpluses enjoyed by his predecessors, who ruled over peaceful northern India (‘Hindustan’) and neither enjoyed nor desired control over south India (‘Dakhan’) were eroded. War means violence, death and disruption, but it also means costs.
Students of India’s modern wars, against Pakistan and China, will notice how short they are. This is because the cost of operating modern war machinery, such as the spares for fighter planes, is so high that no nation except a great power can afford it.
Aurangzeb fought on while his kingdom was economically hollowed out, and this is remarkable because he was not a ruler who was blind to detail. Sir Jadunath, who was also Aurangzeb’s biographer, recorded how carefully the last great Mughal went about the business of administering the state.
Towards the end, the Mughal armies’ salaries were 36 months in arrears and payments would only be made when the province of Bengal, governed by Murshid Quli Khan, a Brahmin convert, sent its revenues to the Centre. It is strange today to imagine the core of the Indian economy being provided by Bengal, but it is this sort of material that illuminates the writing of both Irvine and Sarkar.
The other striking thing is the clarity with which Sir Jadunath exposes the character of the Marathas and the Rajputs. The thing is, both these groups were minor players for most of medieval Indian history. Aurangzeb is seen as being anti-Hindu in our times, but it is not well-known that it was he who introduced Maratha nobles to the Mughal court. We know of Shivaji’s escape from Delhi, but may not know that he had gone there of his own volition, to receive a jagir and was unhappy at being treated the same as other nobles.
The less said about Hindu unity against Muslims after the death of Aurangzeb the better. The fact is that the Marathas extorted the Rajput kingdoms mercilessly. There was such nastiness between them that the Rajputs actually massacred the Maratha soldiers who were occupying their city. In December 1750, Jaipur’s Maharaja Ishwari Singh committed suicide (getting himself bitten by a cobra) because he was unable to pay the Marathas.
Sir Jadunath writes that “on 10 January, some 4,000 Marathas entered Jaipur… (and) despising the helpless condition of a king propped up by their arms, seemed to have behaved towards Jaipur as a city taken by storm. Suddenly the pent-up hatred of the Rajputs burst forth; a riot broke out at noon, and the citizens attacked the unsuspecting Marathas. For nine hours slaughter and pillage raged.”
It is this precision and this clarity that makes us open our eyes to the world as it was in that period. Any notion that we have of Muslim oppression and Hindu liberation goes out of the window on reading this work. The Marathas campaigned for one thing alone, and that was called Chauth . It was a fourth of all the revenue that a kingdom produced. The Sikh misls or bands, who began to become a formidable force in the north, called their extortion ‘Rakhi’ and it was a tenth of all revenue. India suffered under the burden of these two for a long time, though today we think of them as freedom fighters against the nasty Mughals.
The third thing that is remarkable is how appallingly weak and miserable all the characters in this drama are. Not one individual really stands out as being heroic in the true sense. The levels of cravenness are astonishing. And mind you, Sir Jadunath only peripherally refers to the English and the French. The presence of these two is for the most part restricted to support that they offer the Rajputs and Marathas in modernising their armies.
It is only after the Indian powers have spent themselves, exhausted by fighting each other, that the English really come to the fore.
The last thing about this work is that historical names and people that Indians are familiar with today, like Safdarjung, the Nizams of Hyderabad and the Nawabs of Awadh, all began their journey in this period, in the few years that are chronicled by Sir Jadunath.
To give but one example, the Nizam of Hyderabad became the ruler of that province by merely turning his army around and not following one of Aurangzeb’s sons when he went to war against his brothers. By the time that war was over, the power in Delhi was too weak to be able to control the periphery and chaos ruled till the British peace.
Like the six volume work by Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , after which it is named, Sir Jadunath’s work has survived the years well. Those who have not read it have missed out on a real treasure.
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The writer is a columnist and translator of Urdu and Gujarati non-fiction works.
