117II The Punjab

The issues and the institutions over which the conflict between the central and the provincial authorities arose in Awadh and the Punjab had some similarities during the earlier phase of our study, even though the Punjab had three governors in the period under review as against fifteen in Awadh. But the long tenure of the governor in the Punjab at this stage did not signify any institutional change in the pattern of provincial administration. It shows merely the strength of the governor’s lobby at the court and the extension of the infighting among the nobility to the (p.76) province. Towards the end of this phase, however, the events in the Punjab began to take a different course which we shall see later in Chapter 5.