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Chapter 7 – The Fall of the Moghul Empire – The Hindu Revival – 1707–1765 A.D.

Aurangzib was the last of the Great Moghuls, in all save the name. He had been by far the

most powerful of the line; he had ruled wider territories and commanded vaster armies than Akbar; and he had governed his teeming populations with an absolute despotism in which no other man had a voice. What Akbar had achieved by broad-minded statesmanship, and Shah Jahan by imposing majesty and panoplied array, Aurangzib had accomplished by the exercise of an iron will and indomitable personal labour. Through the greater part of his long reign no sovereign was ever more abjectly feared and obeyed; certainly none showed a more marvellous grasp of administration. Then, at the last, the effects of too close repression, of over-government, and of excessive centralization

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were discovered. The tedious war in- the Deccan exhausted his armies and destroyed his prestige, and no sooner was the dominating mind stilled in death than all the forces that he had sternly controlled, all the warring elements that had struggled for’ emancipation from the grinding yoke, broke out in irrepressible tumult. Even before the end of his reign Hindustan was in confusion, and the signs of coming dissolution had appeared. As some imperial corpse, preserved for ages in its dread seclusion, crowned and armed and still majestic, falls to dust at the mere breath of heaven, so fell the empire of the Moghul when the great name that guarded it was no more. To adapt an image drawn by Keene from the well-known Indian tree ficus religiosa, it was as though some splendid palace, reared with infinite skill with all the costliest stones and precious metals of the earth, had attained its perfect beauty only to collapse in undistinguishable ruin when the insidious roots of the creeper sapped the foundations.

Even had Aurangzib left a successor of his own mental and moral stature, it may be doubted whether the process of disintegration could have been stayed. The disease was too far advanced for even the most heroic surgery. To increase the confusion, the Great Moghul had made no nomination to the throne he was vacating, and as usual all the sons claimed the sceptre. The contest was brief; Prince A’zam was slain in battle near Agra, Kam Bakhsh died of his wounds after a defeat near Haidarabad, and the first-born, Mu’azzam,

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A Sikh quoit-turban

With knives and tiger claws, the special Sikh weapons

ascended the throne with the title of Bahadur Shah. He found himself face to face with such difficulties as had not been known since the days of Humayun. It was not merely the Marathas that had to be dealt with; the Rajput rajas were in revolt; the Sikhs were rising in the Panjab, and the Jats near Agra; and the English had ventured on bold reprisals, which were to lead to far-reaching consequences in another half-century.

Nor was it only among non-Moslem Peoples that the spirit of insurrection was alive. These, no doubt, had been excited by the religious intolerance of the late emperor; but the Moslems themselves were scarcely in better order. The fatal system of rewarding services or conciliating jealousies by large grants of territory had produced a kind of baronage fully as dangerous and subversive of central authority as any corresponding class in feudal Europe. The provincial mansabdars had become petty kings, and were far more interested in coercing their neighbours than in supporting their emperor against his many foes. Nor could Bahadur rely upon his troops as Babar and Akbar had trusted them. The toleration of Akbar’s

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policy and the luxurious splendour of Shah Jahan’s court had bred both indifference and effeminacy in what had once been an army of hardy mountaineers. India had proved the Capua of Babar’s veterans, and the enervating climate had relaxed their thews and softened their training, while drink had become the curse not only of the imperial house, many of whom died of it, but also of the nobles and the whole court. As Sir William Hunter has said, “The heroic soldiers of the early empire and their not less heroic wives had given place to a vicious and delicate breed of grandees. The ancestors of Aurangzib, who swooped down on India from the north, were ruddy men in boots: the courtiers among whom Aurangzib grew up were pale persons in petticoats. Babar, the founder of the empire, had swum every river which he met with during thirty years of campaigning; the luxurious nobles around the youthful Aurangzib wore skirts made of innumerable folds of the finest white muslin, and went to war in palankins.” Nothing but the old emperor’s steel hand and high example could have made these men join in his campaigns; but even so, twenty years of doubtful warfare had exhausted what courage there was, and his successor inherited a thoroughly dispirited army.

With such materials as he had, and against such odds, Bahadur must be credited with both courage and prudence. He showed no rancour against the chiefs who had sided with his brothers in the brief war of succession, but gladly welcomed them to his

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councils. His great object was to settle affairs in the Deccan so as to be free to deal with the many troubles in Hindustan. Fortunately, there was a split among the Marathas, and two claimants to the chief command, one of whom, the rightful heir, was a captive in the Moghul camp. This Sahu was released by Bahadur, who recognized his title on conditions of peace. Leaving the Marathas to arrange their own differences, the emperor went north and made terms with the insurgent Rajputs, practically restoring them to the position they had held in Akbar’s reign. The terms might have been less favourable if Bahadur’s anxieties had not been concentrated on a new danger.

The Sikhs, who had begun about two centuries before as a purely religious sect of theists, had been driven by Moslem persecution to form themselves into a military organization, with distinctive uniform, customs, and ceremonies; and by the close of the seventeenth century they had developed into a fierce and fanatical soldiery, burning to avenge the atrocities suffered by their leader, Guru Govind, at the hands of the Moslems. The general confusion at the time of Aurangzib’s death gave them their opportunity. From their retreats on the upper Sutlaj they raided the eastern Panjab, butchering their enemies, men, women, and children, and destroying the mosques. A second raid, as far as Lahore and even Delhi, brought Bahadur into the field. He drove them to the hills, but without materially shaking their power; and then, unfortunately, he died in 1712. Short as his reign had

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A Type of Indian Beauty.

been, it must be remembered that he was the son of a very old man, and was himself nearly Seventy. Had he been in the prime of life, there might possibly have been a different story to tell.

After the usual struggle for the throne and ensuing massacre of kindred, he was succeeded by his son, Jahandar, utterly incapable and incurably vicious; in less than a year he was murdered, and his nephew, Farrukhsiyar, a despicable poltroon, suffered the like fate six years later (1719). Then, after a couple of youths had been tried for a few months, Mohammad Shah received the title of emperor, which he retained for twenty-eight years. It was but a title, however, for the power and the glory had departed from the house of Babar, and Mohammad was able only to preserve some semblance of authority by intrigue and combination with the various governors and adventurers who now partitioned the distracted empire. By such means he contrived to rid himself of the dictatorship of the Barha Sayyids, two brothers who for some years had usurped the supreme control of affairs in the time of their wretched tool, Farrukhsiyar. But there were other forces which he could not master.

Among these the Sikhs were no longer to be reckoned, for they had been put down in the time of the Sayyids with remorseless brutality, and for many years this valiant people was scarcely heard of. The Marathas, on the other hand, were increasing in power every year. Their only rival in the Deccan was Chin Kulich Khan, better known as Asaf Jah, the founder

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of the dynasty of the Nizams of Haidarabad which exists to this day; and Asaf Jah found it expedient to make terms with the enemy and to submit to their system of levying the chauth, a kind of Danegeld by means of which the Marathas systematically extended their influence with less trouble than if they had immediately insisted on territorial cessions. By the skilful policy of Balaji, and his even abler son, Baji Rao, the earliest of the Peshwas – the real leaders, who stood towards the hereditary Maratha raja much as the Shogan did to the Mikado before the Japanese revolution – this system of blackmail was enlarged until it was accepted not only in the Deccan, but in Gujarat, Malwa, and even as far north as Bandelkhand. By this time some famous names, such as Pilaji Gaikwar, Holkar, and Sindhia began to appear among the officers of the peshwa, and save for old Asaf Jah, who was now the leading man in India, there was no corresponding ability on the Moghul side. Even this veteran, when the Marathas, by way of demonstration, advanced to the very gates of Delhi, could muster only thirty-four thousand men to oppose them. The result was the cession of the whole of the territories between the Narbada and the Chambal to the successful peshwa in 1738.

While the wolves of the Deccan were steadily working up from the south, a new catastrophe from the north befell the vestiges of the Moghul empire. In the midst of the pressing difficulties that surrounded them, neither the emperors nor their ministers had

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been able to pay much attention to what was going on in Afghanistan. Kabul and Ghazni still belonged to the empire of Delhi, as they had done since the time of Babar, but Kandahar, which had been in the possession of the Shahs of Persia since 1648, had been seized by the Ghilzai Afghans, who had carried their successes to the point of seating their chief upon the Persian throne in 1722. Their brief triumph was reversed seven years later, by the famous soldier Nadir Shah, who not only gained possession of Persia, but recovered Kandahar in 1738, and immediately completed his conquest by seizing Kabul and Ghazni. The Moghuls, by what should form an instructive precedent, relied on the mountain tribes, whom they had formerly subsidized, to prevent the invaders from penetrating the passes into India; but the subsidy had lapsed during the recent troubles, and the Afghans offered no obstacles to the Persians. In November, 1738, Nadir crossed the Indus, and after a partial engagement with the Moghul forces, who were half disposed to side with the invaders, the conqueror received the surrender of the emperor in February, 1739. The Persians entered Delhi wish Mohammad Shah as their captive guest, and in revenge for a murderous onslaught of the populace, the capital was given over to fire, carnage, and rapine. The imperial treasures, including the famous jewelled Peacock Throne, valued by Tavernier at £6,000,000, were seized and transported to Persia, the inhabitants were squeezed to the last penny, and torture was employed to extort payment. “Sleep

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The Peacock Throne, now in Tehran.

and rest forsook the city. In every chamber and house was heard the cry of affliction. It was before a general massacre, but now the murder of individuals.” The awful visitation of Timur was repeated and even outdone.

At last, after two months of colossal pillage, Nadir returned to his own country, carrying with him spoils equivalent to eight or nine millions in money alone, besides an immense treasure of gold and silver plate, jewels, rich stuffs, and a crowd of skilled artisans, with herds of elephants, horses, and camels.

This invasion of India from the north, unexpected as it was after a cessation of all such inroads during

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two centuries of Moghul power, was too successful not to invite repetition, and upon the assassination of Nadir in 1747, Ahmad Shah, the chief of the Abdali tribe of Afghans, after founding a powerful kingdom at Kandahar, soon found his way into the Panjab. This first attempt was strenuously resisted in 1748, and the battle of Sirhind saw the Afghans driven back by Indian troops as they were never repulsed again; but Ahmad Shah did not abandon his design. The empire of Delhi was at its weakest; the old nizam was dead, and the factions at court were internecine. The new emperor, also named Ahmad, who succeeded Mohammad in 1748, was so sorely beset by the Rohillas that he, or rather his vizir Safdar Jang, nawab or viceroy of Oudh, the first to combine the offices of nawab and vizir, was reduced to the necessity of calling the Marathas to his aid. Holkar and Sindhia enabled the vizir to bring the Rohillas to submission, but the Deccan wolves indemnified themselves liberally for their help, by levying chauth throughout the conquered districts. Even Bengal had been forced to submit to their blackmail, and the Marathas were now in a position to dictate terms at Delhi. Indeed, the empire of Aurangzib had lost the power of resistance. Not a province of all the wide dominion that still nominally owned the Moghul’s sway was really under his control, except the upper Doab and a few districts about the Sutlaj. The Panjab was in the hands of the Afghans, Safdar Jang was practically sovereign at Oudh and Allahabad, and Ali Verdi Khan held Bengal. Afghans

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and Rohillas did as they pleased in the middle Doab and Rohilkhand, Gujarat and Malwa were Maratha provinces, and the Deccan, even the part held by the second nizam, was wholly beyond the mastery of Delhi.

Meanwhile, Ahmad Shah still hovered over the Pan-jab, which was tamely ceded to him in the hope of checking worse demands; but a treacherous attack on his governor at Lahore roused him to a fresh invasion, and in 1756 Delhi again experienced all the horrors of a sack. When he withdrew in the following year, the old intrigues and jealousies revived; the Marathas were again called in, and this time the peshwa’s brother actually occupied the capital, where a new puppet-emperor, Alamgir II, who had succeeded the debauched Ahmad in 1754, was helpless between the rival interests of the vizir, Ghazi-ad-din, and the Afghan chief of Rohilla, Najib-ad-daulah. The Marathas now made themselves masters of the Panjab, and felt that they were within sight of the conquest of the whole of Hindustan. They were in the zenith of their power. Their domestic differences had been accommodated, and a general combination of all their forces was arranged. They were no longer the ill-disciplined band of marauders that had baffled Aurangzib by their guerrilla tactics; besides such predatory hordes, they had well-ordered cavalry and infantry, and a better artillery train than the Moghuls themselves. Full of their strength and ambition, they raised the cry of Hindustan for the Hindus.

It had become a religions war, centred round the

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phantom of the Moghul empire. On the one hand was the Mohammedan Afghan, Ahmad Shah, eager to recover the Panjab and to take vengeance on the new power that had robbed him. On the other was the Moghul vizir of Oudh, Shuja’-ad-daulah, son of Safdar Jang, supported by the forces of the eastern provinces. Between lay the prostrate capital, overawed by the host of the Hindu Marathas. There was not even a Moghul emperor to hold the balance, for the harmless figurehead, Alamgir, had been murdered by the vizir in 1759, and the heir, Shah Alam, had fled to the protection of the British in Bengal in dread of sharing the same fate. Among all the bold adventurers who played the king in India at this time, none was more remarkable than Ghazi-ad-din, the youthful grandnephew of Asaf Jah, who dominated the political situation from 1752 to 1759 by sheer audacity and brilliant recklessness. The murder of the emperor, however, was a stroke that overreached itself, and when the Afghan Shah moved down upon the capital, the unscrupulous young assassin fled for his life. Ahmad Shah found the throne empty, and proceeded, as master of the situation, to take steps for the maintenance of the Mohammedan power in India.

The decisive moment came on January 6, 1761. The Marathas were intrenched at Panipat with a force of 70,000 cavalry and 15,000 infantry, nine thousand of whom were thoroughly disciplined under a Mohammedan who had served in the French army in India under Bussy. The commander-in-chief was the peshwa’s

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Eastern Afghan types.

From Roskoschny’s Afghanistan.

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Blank page

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cousin, Sadasheo Bhao, and Holkar and Sindhia were with him. The Afghans and Moghuls numbered about 53,000 horse, Afghan, Persian, and Indian, and less than 40,000 infantry, partly Rohillas under Najib; but their field-pieces were very inferior to the Marathas’ guns. Too weak to attack, the Moslem army intrenched itself over against the Hindus, and for two months the opposing forces that were contending for the crown of India watched each other narrowly. Famine soon began to make itself felt, but Ahmad Shah refused to force an action. He knew that the Deccan wolves were suffering even more than his Patans and were even opening negotiations for peace with the nawab-vizir, although the Afghan king, strongly urged by Najib, refused all compromise.

At last the Bhao declared that the cup was full to the brim and could not hold another drop; the time for negotiation was past, and the starved Hindus, smeared with turmeric, rushed upon the Afghan army. For a time it looked as if Hinduism had triumphed. The Rohillas suffered tremendously; the vizir could hardly hold his ground; the Moslems were skulking or flying. Ahmad Shah, who was watching the battle from his red tent, saw that the time had come to order up his reserves. He rallied the fugitives, cut down all who would not return to the fight, and sent his mailed reserve, 10,000 strong, to support the vizir and charge upon the enemy in close order. The effect of this heavy charge at the close of an exhausting battle was supreme. The Marathas gave way, the Bhao was

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killed, Holkar and Sindhia left the field, and an awful butchery followed. Once more the plain of Panipat had witnessed a decisive battle in the history of India.

The Marathas never recovered from the blow, though they had still a prominent part to play in the annals of Hindustan. For the present the scene of action was transferred from Delhi to Bengal and Bihar, where the new emperor, Shah Alam, was involved in the complicated difficulties that had sprung up between the nawab-vizir and the British. Here, however, the history of Mohammedan India closes, and the history of British India begins. The victory of Panipat swept the Marathas away only to make a clear path for the English. Less than four years afterwards the battle of Baxar (Baksar), on October 23, 1764, disposed of the power of the nawab, and the next day Shah Alam came into the British camp. The treaty then signed made the nawab-vizir a vassal of Calcutta and the Moghul emperor a pensioner of the East India Company. Such was the political tragedy of the famous House of Timur.

The dynasty of Babar ended in nothingness, like all its many predecessors. The Mohammedan ascendency in Hindustan, rising from Mahmud’s raids, spreading under the vigorous rule of a few of the Slave Kings and their great successor, Ala-ad-din, and attaining its widest scope and severest aspect under Aurangzib, only to fall rapidly to its decline in the weak hands of his descendants, left few traces of its long domination. A new vernacular, compounded of the languages

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of the Shah Namah and the Ramayana; a multitude of exquisite monuments of the Moslem faith, inspired by analogies in far western lands of Islam, but modified, and, if one may say so, sensualized by the grosser architecture of India; a few provinces still owning Mohammedan rulers; a large Moslem minority content to dwell among “infidels” and to obey the behests of the Christians from the distant islands of the West – such are the chief legacies of Islam to India. Nine centuries of association have produced no sensible fusion between the Moslem and the Hindu, any more than two centuries of intercourse have blended either with the dominant English. There are those who believe that the contact of Western energy with Eastern thought, the infusion of European literature in the subtle Indian mind, and the reaction of the ancient philosophies of the Brahman schools upon the imagination of the West, may end in generating a new force in the world, perchance an Indian nation combining the profound speculations of the East with the progressive activities of Europe. Prophecy is no part of the historian’s duty; but if any forecast may be deduced from the long period of alien rule surveyed in the preceding pages, it is not favourable to any hopes of such a consummation. The conquerors of India have come in hordes again and again, but they have scarcely touched the soul of the people. The Indian is still, in the main, what he always was, in spite of them all; and however forcible the new and unprecedented influences now at work upon an instructed minority,

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one can with difficulty imagine any serious change in the rooted character and time-honoured instincts of the vast mass of the people, nor is it at all certain that such change would be for the better.

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