Walsh J.E. A Brief History of India

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

a mature empire, enormous in size and wealth, where the revenues from

a large district in Lahore or Agra brought in more than 1 million rupees

each year.

Shah Jahan was a seasoned general, and his army overall was larger

than it had been in Akbar’s time. Yet he spent a smaller proportion of

his wealth on military and government ofﬁ cials than had his grandfa-

ther. Instead he directed a series of spectacular building projects. For

his coronation he had the Peacock Throne constructed. At the death of

his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, he commissioned the Taj Mahal as an

eventual tomb for both their bodies. In 1639 he ordered a new capi-

tal city, Shajahanabad, to be built on a site just south of Delhi. When

ﬁ nished in 1648, the new city contained a great royal fortress and the

largest mosque in India, the Jama Masjid.

During Shah Jahan’s reign, prominent Suﬁ leaders were urging ortho-

dox Sunni Muslims to adhere strictly to sharia laws. Perhaps this, as

much as personal inclination, accounts for the more Muslim style of

Shah Jahan’s rule. He celebrated Islamic festivals with great enthusiasm

and resumed sponsorship of a yearly pilgrimage to Mecca. Beginning

in 1633 he enforced sharia laws forbidding the repair of churches or

temples. In his relations with court nobles he abandoned the personal

discipleship encouraged by his father and grandfather, emphasizing

Jama Masjid, New Delhi. Built by Shah Jahan in the 17th century, this is one of the largest

and ﬁ nest mosques in India.

(courtesy of Judith E. Walsh)

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TURKS, AFGHANS, AND MUGHALS

instead the long-standing familial ties Muslim nobles had with Mughal

rulers. By the middle of his reign all 73 of the most elite nobles and 80

percent of higher-ranking mansabdars were Muslim.

Taj Mahal, Agra. The Taj was built by Shah Jahan as a memorial and resting place for his

favorite wife, Arjumand Banu Begum (otherwise known as Mumtaz Mahal, “ornament of

the palace”). They were married in 1612, and all 14 of Shah Jahan’s subsequent children

were hers. She died in 1631, at the age of 39, giving birth to her 14th child. Construction of

the Taj, which would provide a tomb for the bodies of both Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan,

began in 1632.

(courtesy of Judith E. Walsh)

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

Conﬂ ict among Shah Jahan’s adult sons (and their court factions)

preoccupied the last years of the emperor’s reign. Dara Shukoh, the

emperor’s favorite and appointed heir, shared his great-grandfather’s

ecumenical interest in religion. He had had the Upanishads translated

into Persian and believed that they reﬂ ected a monotheistic religious

sensibility that was, at its core, Islamic. Dara attracted those at court

who yearned for a return to Akbar’s more religiously diverse court. At

the opposite pole was Shah Jahan’s third son, Aurangzeb. An excellent

military commander and experienced administrator, Aurangzeb was

a pious Muslim. “He pretended to be a faquir (faqir), a holy mendi-

cant,” observed an unsympathetic Italian at the court, “by which he

renounced the world, gave up all claim to the crown, and was content

to pass his life in prayers and mortiﬁ cations” (Richards 1995, 153).

Aurangzeb attracted those who wanted a court committed to Islam and

the institution of a religiously orthodox state.

Aurangzeb

When Shah Jahan fell seriously ill in 1657, these two court factions

turned the Mughal military inward upon itself. The struggle for suc-

cession lasted two years. It ended with Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) as

emperor; his father, Shah Jahan, imprisoned; and all three of his broth-

ers dead. Dara Shukoh was executed after the Delhi ulama convicted

him of apostasy and idolatry.

Aurangzeb’s rule inaugurated a more aggressively orthodox and

Islamic court culture. The new austerity curtailed large building proj-

ects, ended Mughal patronage of musicians and painters, and banned

wine and opium from court. The sharia, as interpreted by court ulama,

was to provide the ideological basis for Mughal government. New

temple construction was banned, and old temples and idols were often

destroyed; new taxes were imposed on temple pilgrims and Hindu

merchants; and in 1679 the jizya was again imposed on all Hindus.

Aurangzeb also sought to increase the number of Muslims in Mughal

service and to restrict Rajput access to the higher mansabdari ranks.

When he learned that the ninth Sikh guru had converted Muslims to

his religion, Aurangzeb had him arrested and put to death. His armies

pursued the 10th guru for years in the Himalayan foothills.

The ﬁ rst 30 years of Aurangzeb’s reign aimed at creating a more

Islamic Mughal regime. But in 1681, in part because of the emperor’s

anti-Hindu policies, Rajput clans supported the efforts of a son, Akbar

II, to usurp the throne. The attempt failed, and Akbar ﬂ ed to the

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TURKS, AFGHANS, AND MUGHALS

Maratha kingdom and eventually to the court of the Persian kings.

Aurangzeb, fearing a possible coalition of enemies at court with

Rajputs, independent Deccani sultans, and Marathas, determined to

bring the Deccan under his control. He marched south, taking with

him his own army, the armies of his three sons, and those of his major

generals. In 1685 he defeated the sultans of Bijapur (the Karnatak) and

Golconda (Hyderabad). In 1689 his forces tracked down and killed the

Maratha king Sambhaji. By then Mughal territories extended from the

Himalayas to all but the very tip of the Indian peninsula.

But the Marathas refused to surrender. Aurangzeb spent the last 20

years of his life in the Deccan, much of it living in a giant tent city 30

miles in circumference, vainly attempting to bring the Deccan under

his control. Even after Mughal troops killed Sambhaji’s brother Rajaram

in 1698, Rajaram’s widow, Tara Bai, fought on as regent for her infant

son. From 1700 to 1705 the Mughals repeatedly besieged and captured

Maratha hill fortresses only to have the Marathas recapture them as

soon as the Mughals withdrew. In the countryside, Maratha armies col-

lected the land revenues before the Mughals could secure them.

In the north, Mughal administrative and ﬁ scal systems were break-

ing down. The cost of the Deccan war was depleting the treasury even

as the growing practice of “tax farming” (hiring a third party to collect

revenues from a jagir) was reducing overall revenues. The old mansab-

dari military system was no longer honored—soldiers were either not

provided or inadequately horsed and equipped. Rebellion, disorder, and

disaffection were breaking out even in the Indo-Gangetic heartland. In

the late 1680s, Hindu Jat peasants south of Agra plundered Mughal

supply trains with such impunity that Aurangzeb had to send troops

from the Deccan to stop them.

In 1705, old and ill, Aurangzeb abandoned his war and began a

slow march north. Two years later he died, in his tent city outside

Aurangabad. “My famous and auspicious sons should not quarrel

among themselves and allow a general massacre of the people,” he

wrote in almost identical letters to his three sons and heirs shortly

before his death. “My years have gone by proﬁ tless. . . . I have greatly

sinned and know not what torment awaits me” (Smith 1958, 426).

Muslim Society

The Muslim society that developed across India over the centuries of

Muslim rule was divided into elite, or ashraf (honorable), and nonelite

households. Ashraf Muslims were urban, religious ofﬁ cials (ulama),

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

soldiers, and administrators. By the end of the Delhi Sultanate, inde-

pendent Muslim rulers had established themselves throughout much of

the subcontinent. Muslim elites settled along with these rulers in their

capitals and trading centers. By the 15th century elite Muslims who

claimed Arab ancestry were called Sayyids; from Central Asian ancestry,

Mughals; and Afghan ancestry, Pathans.

Non-ashraf Muslims were urban artisans and rural cultivators orga-

nized into endogamous jati communities, some of which certainly had

preexisted the Muslims. The ﬁ rst British census in the mid-19th cen-

tury found that Muslims made up one-quarter of the population, con-

centrated in the largest numbers in the Punjab and Bengal. Conversions

in Bengal probably date to Mughal efforts to expand deltaic farmlands

under Aurangzeb and were carried out by Suﬁ masters who established

mosques and Muslim religious centers in the eastern Bengal region.

Muslim elites and Muslim artisan jatis lived in the urban centers

of India, in the prosperous trading cities and in the various provincial

SHIVAJI AND THE MARATHAS

he term Maratha occurs early in Indian history (1st century C.E.)

but originally only as a description of peoples who spoke the

language of the region. During the 14th–17th centuries, with repeated

Muslim invasions of the Deccan Plateau and the establishment of the

Bahmani Sultanate, a distinct Maratha community, deﬁ ned by martial,

military, and administrative abilities, began to differentiate itself from

other non-Muslim, non-Brahman, cultivating and pastoral castes of

the Deccan Plateau. By the 17th century, Maratha clans were soldiers

and administrators either within Deccani Muslim governments or in

opposition to them. The most famous Maratha leader, Shivaji Bhonsle

(1630–80), had begun to build his kingdom and his army of mobile

guerrilla ﬁ ghters out of competing Maratha clans by the age of 20. His

exploits and the daring of his guerrilla forces became legendary in the

Deccan. In 1659, surrounded by troops of the Bijapur Sultan, he disem-

boweled their general, Afzal Khan, with “tiger claws” strapped to his

ﬁ ngers, and his followers slaughtered the Bijapur forces (among whom

were also Marathas). In 1666, offended by Aurangzeb’s treatment, he

escaped imprisonment in Agra (allegedly by hiding in a basket of sweet-

meats) and returned to Maharashtra within a month, eluding capture

by taking side routes through tribal areas east of Malwa. In 1674, after

Brahman ritual specialists invested him with the sacred thread and

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capitals and the capitals of independent, regional sultanates. The Bengal

sultanate, for instance, had its capital in Gaur in the early 16th century.

Gaur was a large and prosperous city. It had a population of 40,000 and

stretched for several miles along the river. Its markets were full of cheap

and plentiful food, and its streets and lanes were paved with bricks. A

Portuguese traveler who visited it noted how crowded its streets had

become: “The streets and cross-lanes are so full of people that [it] is

impossible to move and it has reached the point where the high noble-

men have taken to being preceded along the road to the palace by men

carrying bamboo sticks to push people out of the way” (Eaton 1993, 98).

Purdah

The Qur’an places women and men in terms of absolute equality before

God (Allah), but in social terms, Muslim women were subordinate to

Muslim men. “Men are in charge of women,” says the Qur’an, “because

Kshatriya status, Shivaji installed himself as ruler in an elaborate Vedic

ritual employing thousands of priests and reputedly costing 5 million

rupees. At the time of his death in 1680, Shivaji’s Maratha kingdom

extended the length of the Konkan hills in the west and included

smaller domains to the southeast, the largest centered on Tanjore city.

Shivaji’s heir, Sambhaji (ruled 1680–88), supported the failed coup of

Aurangzeb’s son Akbar II in 1681 and was hunted down, tortured, and

killed by the Mughals in 1688—his body torn apart and thrown to dogs.

But although the Mughal emperor annexed the Deccan the next year,

neither he nor his successors could stamp out Maratha power. In 1719

the Mughals gave the Marathas all of Shivaji’s earlier territories in return

for a yearly tribute.

During the 18th century, a series of literate Chitpavan Brahman

peshwas (prime ministers) shaped the Marathas into a powerful confed-

eracy. Shivaji’s grandson Shahu (1707–49) appointed Balaji Vishwanath

(r. 1713–20) as the ﬁ rst peshwa; the position became hereditary with his

son, Baji Rao I (r. 1720–40). Peshwa bureaucrats, based in Pune (Poona),

used Mughal techniques to organize the confederacy and farm out its

extensive land revenues. Marauding Maratha armies periodically swept

across the North India plains in plundering raids that in 1742 reached

the outskirts of Calcutta. By 1751 Maratha Confederacy territories

extended north into Rajasthan, Delhi, and the Punjab and south into the

Karnatak and Tamil land.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDIA

Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they

spend their property (for the support of women)” (Eaton 1993, 297).

The Muslim practice of purdah (meaning literally “veil” or “curtain”)

required that women not be seen by men unrelated to them. Elite Muslim

women lived in the zenana (women’s quarters) of the home, away from

all men but their husbands and closest male relatives. When they trav-

eled, they did so in covered conveyances. Ancient Indian society had also

developed practices that restricted women’s social mobility and behav-

ior, particularly in the early centuries

C.E. Over the centuries in which

Muslims ruled many sections of India, Muslim conventions intensiﬁ ed

these Hindu practices, and by the 19th century purdah was the custom-

ary practice of high-caste Hindu and elite communities throughout India.

In Decline

The centralized Mughal Empire did not survive much past the last of its

great Mughal leaders. Aurangzeb’s ambition to control the Deccan forced

LATER MUGHAL EMPERORS

AND THE CAUSE OF THEIR

REIGN’S END

Date of Rule Emperors

1707–12 Bahadur Shah I (died)

1712–13 Jahandar Shah (murdered)

1713–19 Farukkhsiyar (murdered)

1719–48 Muhammad Shah (died)

1748–54 Ahmad Shah (deposed)

1754–59 Alamgir II (murdered)

1759–1806 Shah Alam II (died)

1806–37 Akbar Shah II (died)

1837–57 Bahadur Shah II (deposed)

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him to spend long years there, to the detriment of his North Indian

empire. Wars of succession, the one problem the Mughals never solved,

tore them apart periodically during the time of the Great Mughals. After

Aurangzeb’s death, with administrative and revenue systems in grow-

ing disarray, succession struggles brought Mughal power more or less

to an end. In the succession crisis that followed Aurangzeb’s death in

1707, Bahadur Shah (r. 1707–12) killed his two competing brothers

and became the sixth Mughal emperor. Between his death in 1712 and

1720, repeating wars of succession convulsed the Mughal court. By

1720 regional Mughal nobles were asserting their independent control

over Punjab, Oudh, Bengal, Gujarat, and the Deccan. Rajput kings and

the Marathas encroached on Mughal territories at every opportunity.

By the mid-18th century the Mughals themselves controlled little more

than the territory surrounding Delhi. It would only be under the next

great empire—that of the British—that the centralization begun by the

Great Mughals would reach its logical conclusion.

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100

The Jewel in the Crown

(1757–1885)

When, by the blessing of Providence, internal tranquility shall be restored, it is our

earnest desire to stimulate the peaceful industry of India, to promote works of

public utility and improvement, and to administer its government for the beneﬁ t

of all our subjects resident therein. In their prosperity will be our strength,

in their contentment our security, and in their gratitude our best reward.

Proclamation of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, 1858

(Muir 1969, 384)

n 1739 the Persian king Nadir Shah (r. 1736–47) raided the Mughal

capital at Delhi, destroyed the current emperor’s army, killed more

than 30,000 Delhi residents, and returned to Persia with gold, jewels, and

Shah Jahan’s Peacock Throne. The Mughal Empire was over—although

it would survive as a weakened shell for more than a hundred years. The

remaining competitors for Mughal power were local and regional Mughal

ofﬁ cials (nawabs and nizams), regionally dominant tribes and rulers

(Hindu or Muslim), and two foreign trading companies, one English and

one French, both relative newcomers to the Indian scene.

Of all of these, it was British East India Company that would replace

the Mughals as India’s new paramount power—against the objections

of many in Great Britain itself. By 1876, when the British government

ﬁ nally declared Queen Victoria empress of India, Great Britain had

made India the “jewel in the crown” of its worldwide empire and was

developing new ideologies—“Pax Britannica” and the “civilizing mis-

sion”—to justify British imperial rule.

Nawabs and Nabobs

The Mughals were so weak by the mid-18th century that they had

become, in effect, a regional power, controlling Delhi and its surround-

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THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

ing environs but little else. Their war machine was in ruins, and their

land taxes were farmed out to the highest bidders. Regional nawabs

(Mughal provincial governors) in Hyderabad, Oudh, and Bengal were

now de facto rulers. They maintained a superﬁ cial deference to Mughal

authority but sent no revenue and fought wars or sued for peace at

their will. To the north, an Afghan-based empire that included Sind

and much of the Punjab was ruled by Ahmad Shah Abdali (r. 1747–72).

To the south, the Marathas ruled homelands in the Deccan and adja-

cent centers in Tanjore and the Karnatak. By the 1750s the Maratha

peshwa (prime minister) at Pune headed the Maratha Confederacy

dominated by four Maratha ruling families, each with its own local

domain: The Gaekwar dynasty controlled Baroda; Holkar controlled

Indore; Scindia controlled Gwalior; and Bhonsle controlled Nagpur.

The breakdown of Mughal authority left villages across North India

unprotected and allowed Maratha armies to raid virtually unchecked

across the subcontinent. Maratha horsemen rode up to the walled vil-

lages of the Indian plains, demanding gold and rupees—and killing

those who did not have them. An 18th-century observer described the

terror of these raids:

. . . the bargis [Maratha horsemen] entered the villages. They

set fire to the houses, large and small, temples and dwelling

places. . . . Some victims they tied with their arms twisted behind

them. Some they flung down and kicked with their shoes. They

constantly shouted “Give us rupees, give us rupees, give us

rupees.” When they got no rupee, they filled their victims’ nos-

trils with water and drowned them in tanks. Some were put to

death by suffocation. Those who had money gave it to the bargis;

those who had none gave up their lives. (Smith 1958, 466)

In 1742 Maratha raiders reached as far east as the outskirts of Calcutta

before being turned back. Maratha hopes of installing their own can-

didate on the Mughal throne were destroyed in 1761, however, on the

battleﬁ eld of Panipat, when Afghan armies helped the weak Mughal

ruler to destroy Maratha forces.

As the Mughals’ collapse became increasingly obvious, two European

trading companies, one French and the other English, battled each

other for commercial and political dominance along the Indian coasts.

By the mid-18th century the India-Europe trade in textiles, indigo, salt-

peter, tea, and spices was extremely lucrative. The French company was

returning almost 25 percent on its investment to shareholders at home.

The British East India Company’s share in this trade was worth £2 mil-

lion. As early as the late 18th century wealthy company “nabobs”—a

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